Bridgenorth, Shropshire (c. 1790): Art, History and Details

Bridgenorth, Shropshire (c. 1790) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The medium of watercolor has a richer tradition in England than almost any other country, and its rise in importance was closely connected to the development of landscape painting. Paul Sandby was among the first British artists to produce a substantial body of landscape watercolors. Early in his career, Sandby worked as a mapmaker, surveying the Highlands in Scotland while working for the government. His mature work combines topographical accuracy with picturesqe compositions and carefully observed figure groups. This watercolor shows a gated medieval bridge across the River Severa near the town of Bridgenorth, in western England, near Wales. Sandby depicted the subject several times in both watercolors and prints. Here, the rustic merrymakers dancing to a fiddler's music add a social dimension to the scene.

Object facts

• Title: Bridgenorth, Shropshire
• Date: c. 1790
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor over graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 35.5 x 51.7 cm (14 x 20 3/8 in.); Secondary Support: 43 x 57.2 cm (16 15/16 x 22 1/2 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1997.69

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. King Rosendale in honor of Beatrice R. Grubb

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foster, Carter. "A Picturesque View." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 37, no.10 (December 1997): 7.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.