This commanding early 19th-century landscape painting by English artist Thomas Creswick RA (1811-1869) depicts a rushing mountain stream cascading over boulders, while a fisherman and heron look on.
Here, placed upon higher ground, the water is unrelenting, cascading below us, its power emphasised by resisting rocks and trees gripping the slope with unseen roots. Humanity is miniaturised, intent on drawing sustenance from a force far greater than itself.
The composition is driven diagonally, with the stream cutting across the foreground, pulling the eye into the picture plane. While the forest rises densely to the right, its foliage layered and carefully observed. Beyond, mountains recede under a pale sky, softened by distance. A narrow track to the right edge quickly dissolves in the surrounding wilderness.
Painted in 1832, when Creswick was still in his early twenties, the work reveals a young artist already committed to truthful observation. The water is rendered with lively, broken strokes that convey both weight and speed, while the rocks are solid, irregular, and convincingly embedded. Light moves gently across the scene, illuminating the stream while leaving the forest interior in a cool enveloping shadow. A moment caught during a walk, sketched from life, and later resolved in oil.
Creswick was born in Sheffield and became one of the leading figures of the Birmingham School of landscape painting. Trained initially under John Vincent Barber, he developed a reputation for honest, close observation, working directly from nature at a time when many artists still relied heavily on studio invention.
He travelled widely across England, Wales, and Ireland, repeatedly returning to rocky valleys, wooded glens, and fast-moving streams, settings that allowed him to study terrain with particular intensity. His work was admired by the Victorian middle classes and widely disseminated through engravings.
John Ruskin famously described Creswick as “one of the very few artists who do draw from nature and try for nature,” praising his refusal to distort or idealise the landscape for effect. Over the course of his career, Creswick exhibited 266 works at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, and the Suffolk Street Gallery, and in 1850 he became the first landscape painter to be elected a full member of the Royal Academy.
Today, his work is held in major public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sheffield Museums, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
Signed and dated lower right and held in a later gilt frame with applied ornament and foliate detailing.
Learn more about Thomas Creswick in our directory.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Overall size: 41½” x 30½” / 105cm x 78cm
Year of creation: 1832
Provenance: Private collection, Austria.
Condition: Cleaned. Revarnished. Craquelure throughout. The paint layer is stable. Frame in good condition with minor wear.
Artist’s auction maximum: £35,000 for ‘The Nearest Way In Summer Time (1854)’, Oil on canvas, Christie’s, Victorian Pictures, London, 13 June 2000 (lot 79).
Our reference: BRV2233
