Thorpe, Derbyshire1879 – 1880 Accession number: 1904P497 Watercolour on paper. Width: 430 mm Height: 297 mm InformationTrained as an architect, Boyce decided on a career as an artist after meeting the painter David Cox in 1849 and 1851. He subsequently became friends with Rossetti, and was closely linked with the Pre-Raphaelite circle and with Ruskin.Contemporary critics commented on the subtlety of Boyce's handling of colour and his eye for an unconventional composition. The 'Art Journal' remarked in 1866 that 'Mr Boyce is singular in his choice of subjects, inasmuch as he loves to plant his sketching stool just where there is no subject' (vol. 5, July 1866, pp. 174-175).This watercolour depicts a village just north of Ashbourne, in the Peak District. It was exhibited at the Old Watercolour Society's summer exhibition in 1880. In his review for the 'Athenaeum' F. G. Stephens commented that the handling of the gate in the foreground was 'rather thin,' but praised it as a 'picture of sloping meadows, woodland, an ivy-clad church tower, a lane ending in a farm gate and a rough hedge.' He was particularly taken with Boyce's use of colour adding that 'the whole is suffused by warm grey light, and the tenderness of the subtly graded local colouring of the sky and foliage is exquisite' (1 May 1880, p. 573). Trained as an architect, Boyce decided on a career as an artist after meeting the painter David Cox in 1849 and 1851. He subsequently became friends with Rossetti, and was closely linked with the Pre-Raphaelite circle and with Ruskin.Contemporary critics commented on the subtlety of Boyce's handling of colour and his eye for an unconventional composition. 'The Art Journal' remarked in 1866 that 'Mr Boyce is singular in his choice of subjects, inasmuch as he loves to plant his sketching stool just where there is no subject'.
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