Artwork Page for Trees and Undergrowth

Details / Information for Trees and Undergrowth

Trees and Undergrowth

1885
(British, 1856–1921)
Support
Thick, moderately textured cream wove paper
Measurements
Sheet: 19 x 26.8 cm (7 1/2 x 10 9/16 in.)
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

Although William Fraser Garden received critical recognition for his watercolors early in his career, he lived and worked in relative obscurity and was plagued by financial troubles for most of his life.

Description

William Fraser Garden’s work was based on the rendering of minute detail with painstaking brushwork and handling of color. Here, he describes an insignificant corner of the Bedford landscape: a tangled thicket in which dry grasses and saplings commingle. Bare branches stretch across a bright blue sky, creating a pattern as intricate as a spider’s web. This may have been the drawing that Garden exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1885 with the title Early Spring in the Woods. A pale green haze in the grass, the azure sky, and scattered wildflowers suggest the promise of spring.
A horizontally oriented watercolor and gouache painting with intricate brushwork depicts a thicket. In the foreground, tangled tan grasses and spindly shrubs fill the lower half. To the right, a thick, mossy tree trunk rises vertically. On the left, dark, twisted branches reach across the upper half against a blue sky with soft white clouds. Layers of green and brown foliage fill the background behind the interwoven branches and tall grass.

Trees and Undergrowth

1885

Garden William Fraser

(British, 1856–1921)
England, 19th century

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