This charming little oil study by Benjamin Barker of Bath (1776-1838) depicts a wooded landscape near Bath, with two tiny figures travelling along a pale track beneath a dense canopy of trees.

Painted in oil on paper and later laid onto panel, it has all the immediacy one would expect from a working study. Barker is simply recording all the things that interested him most: the weight of the woodland, the opening of the sky, the route of the path, and the way a small pale building appears unexpectedly through the trees.

On the left, the woodland rises heavily and darkly, with trunks and foliage merged into broad passages of brown, green and black. At the centre, the eye is released into a lighter space where the track winds through the trees and a small cottage appears in the distance. Above, a patch of blue sky and brilliant cloud breaks through the canopy, illuminating the scene.

The cottage is barely more than a pale shape with a roof and chimney. The central trees are rapidly indicated. Fallen timber and exposed roots are placed with economical strokes. Even the two figures are tiny accents rather than narrative protagonists. Yet the whole place feels understood.

This is perhaps what makes a study such as this so revealing. A finished landscape tells us what an artist ultimately chose to present. A sketch can tell us what first caught his attention.

Here, Barker appears to be looking for structure. Where does the eye enter the landscape? How can a dark mass of woodland be relieved by a shaft of sky? Where should the brightest passage sit? How much of the distant cottage needs to be seen before it becomes a destination within the composition?

There's good reason to connect this study with Barker’s known interest in the landscape around Wick, near Bath. A larger painting titled 'View at Wick, near Bath' is held at Nostell Priory, and another small oil study on paper, measuring approximately 17.8 x 22.8 cm, was sold at Christie’s in London in 2002. That smaller work contains several closely related motifs.

The present study is not an exact miniature of the Nostell painting, but it suggests that Barker may well have worked through a landscape in stages. A small oil study such as this could preserve an arrangement observed directly from nature, such as the position of a cottage, the movement of a path, and the character of a group of trees. Back in the studio, such information could then be expanded, rearranged and refined into a more ambitious composition.

Barker was known during his lifetime as the “English Poussin”, a reflection of his interest in classical landscape structure and carefully organised scenery. But studies such as this remind us that those larger compositions did not necessarily begin with a grand theory. They could begin very simply - with a path, a cottage and a patch of sky.

Held in a beautiful later gilt frame.