Dimensions: support: 324 x 489 mm frame: 413 x 578 x 45 mm
Copyright: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: So, this is "Waterperry, Oxfordshire" by William Alfred Delamotte. It's an oil on board landscape. There's this quiet stillness about it. What draws your eye when you look at it? Curator: I’m struck by the implied social commentary of the rural idyll depicted. What is absent? The labor. Where is the representation of those who actually work the land? Is this a landscape for the landed gentry? Consider the power dynamics inherent in landscape art of this era. Editor: That's a completely different way of seeing it than I did. Curator: It's crucial to question whose perspectives are privileged and whose are erased in these seemingly neutral portrayals of nature. Editor: I’ll definitely keep that in mind moving forward. Thanks! Curator: It’s a responsibility we all share.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/delamotte-waterperry-oxfordshire-t01050
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This is one of a number of oil sketches Delamotte made from nature during his tenure as drawing master at the Royal Military Academy at Great Marlow. Despite being a sketch, it is very carefully painted. An inscription on the back gives details of the weather for the two days he spent on the work: on the first it was thundery, by the second it was clearing but cloudy. Constable was later to make often extensive meteorological notes on the backs of his own oil sketches, especially the sky studies he painted at Hampstead. Gallery label, September 2004
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