Print c. 18th century

This print by William Elliot was based on an original drawing by W. Gainsborough. It captures a landscape that seems bucolic at first glance, but look closer. What does it mean to create an image of the English countryside during a time of intense enclosure and land ownership disputes? Consider the figure lying on the ground. Are they resting, or are they a casualty of the changing landscape? Elliot, who also served in the military, captures the stark reality of the socio-economic transformations in 18th-century England, but the overall impact, the sleepy cottage, the gnarled tree, is less about social critique and more about the way the landscape can absorb the human cost of progress, or extraction. This engraving exists as a record of how land, identity, and survival are inextricably linked. It reflects our emotional connections to place and home, even as those spaces are subject to the forces of history and change.