This late 19th-century oil painting by British artist William Charles Estall (1857-1897) depicts a view with a river, cattle, windmill and storm clouds. Estall was an accomplished landscape painter in oils, pastels, and watercolours.
During the 1870s, when Estall undertook his training at Manchester School of Art, landscape painting in England was predominantly tied to a ‘house style’ based around the tenets of ‘naturalism’. As such, the foremost artists, such as Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923) and George Vicat Cole (1833-1893), would render a view realistically, often with careful attention to the scenic minutiae. The expectation from critics was that the rural idyll should be celebrated for its flora, pastoral heritage, and diversity of topography. It was entirely unique and artists needed to present it with fidelity.
However, over in France (particularly Paris), the ideologies were somewhat different as the emerging landscape painters were adding an altogether less tangible quality to their work - emotion. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) was arguably the greatest in this respect - his hazy visions of windswept trees and delicate shimmering ponds were more akin to an impression than a true representation. They were emotive, charged with imagination, and far from contrived.
Young Estall was entranced, Corot was capturing not only nature itself but also how one felt among it. When shifting clouds, as temporary as one’s moods, cast ambient shadows across a flickering wood. Corot was followed by numerous other landscape pioneers, each obsessed with painting ‘en plein air’, outside in the elements. For how can one truly portray nature without first understanding its effects upon us?
Estall’s emotionally-transparent renderings of the countryside were initially met with broadly negative reactions. Victorian art critics weren’t as keen to emphasise one’s feelings, or indeed, even speak about them. One proclaimed that, while he could appreciate his works, “as English scenery and English life they are not to be received as the Merrie England of British-born eyes.”
Despite this, he continued in the same vein and, over time, achieved a fair degree of success, particularly when shown at London’s premier exhibition, the hallowed Royal Academy. And by the late 1880s, following a move to Hardham, Sussex, his reviews were a little brighter. “I have never heard of Mr Estall before. He is a young man, and has evidently studied long in France, for the influence of Millet, Troyon, Daubigny, and Rousseau is plainly visible.”
In 1897, with his career beginning to take shape, he tragically suffered a cardiac arrest and died at the age of 40. Just a few months after his close friend and fellow artist, Arthur Tomson (1859-1905), had written a glowing appraisal of his unusually poetic spirit. We’ve published this in our artist directory.
As we look back across the oeuvre of this talented creative, his works resonate with us today perhaps more than ever - they remind us that it doesn’t take an encyclopaedic knowledge of art history to simply appreciate how we feel.
William Charles Estall is represented in various public collections including the Rijksmuseum and Manchester Art Gallery.
Signed in the lower left and held within a gilt frame.
Learn more about William Charles Estall in our directory.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Overall size: 37” x 30” / 94cm x 76cm
Year of creation: c. 1890
Provenance: Private collection, UK.
Condition: Assessed and approved by our conservator. Fine and settled craquelure, as you would expect. The paint layer is stable. Frame restored. Gilding with handling marks and signs of age.
Artist’s auction maximum: £2,310 for ‘A Shepherdess and her Flock’, Oil on canvas, Sotheby’s, Victorian and Modern British Paintings and Sculpture, London, 1986 (lot 111).
Our reference: BRV1846
