Girl Feeding Pigs

1800

Not on view

A productive member of London's Royal Academy, Westall exhibited paintings and watercolors of histories, portraits and rustic scenes. This girl offering water to thirsty pigs demonstrates his mastery of the latter mode, and exemplifies a type of benign rustic imagery popular in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries--leading masters of the mode include Thomas Gainsborough, George Stubbs, and George Morland. By focusing on a sweet girl, whose parents rest by their cottage door in the background in a sunny woodland, the work presents a comforting alternative to the rough realities of rural life. Its success is demonstrated by the fact that two related stipple engravings were published by 1802.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Provenance

Title: Girl Feeding Pigs
Artist: Richard Westall (British, Reepham, Norfolk 1765–1836 London)
Date: 1800
Medium: Watercolor
Dimensions: Sheet: 9 1/8 × 12 1/2 in. (23.1 × 31.7 cm)
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: Gift of Regina Slatkin, 1955
Object Number: 55.551.5
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

More Artwork

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In the same medium

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Fronticepiece for Tasso's Poems, Richard Westall British, Pen and ink, brush and wash — Fronticepiece for Tasso's Poems
Richard Westall
Torquato Tasso
late 18th–mid-19th century

The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the United Church of England and Ireland...

Multiple artists/makers

1811

Sir John Floyd on horseback, Richard Westall British, Watercolor — Sir John Floyd on horseback
Richard Westall
Sir John Floyd, 1st Baronet
1800–14

The Lake of Zug, Joseph Mallord William Turner British, Watercolor and bodycolor (gouache) with reductive techniques over graphite — The Lake of Zug
Joseph Mallord William Turner
1843

Loggia of the Ducal Palace, Venice, John Ruskin British, Watercolor over graphite — Loggia of the Ducal Palace, Venice
John Ruskin
1849–50

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