Leigh Tor Rocks at Poundsgate, near New Bridge on the Dart, Devon (1800): Art, History and Details

Leigh Tor Rocks at Poundsgate, near New Bridge on the Dart, Devon (1800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John White Abbott (British, 1763–1851).

The work and its context

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

This closely observed watercolor was made in Dartmoor—an expanse of moorland in southwest England capped with a series of more than 100 exposed granite hilltops known as "tors," ranging from the monolithic to the nondescript. John White Abbott chose a low vantage point that accentuated the looming immensity of the outcrop in whose shelter a herd of cows has converged. Almost austere in its lack of superfluous detail, this small sheet suggests the untamed quality of the Devon moors.

Object facts

• Title: Leigh Tor Rocks at Poundsgate, near New Bridge on the Dart, Devon
• Date: 1800
• Creator attribution: John White Abbott (British, 1763–1851)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor with pen and black ink and traces of graphite underdrawing
• Dimensions: Image: 16 x 24.7 cm (6 5/16 x 9 3/4 in.); Sheet: 17.9 x 26.9 cm (7 1/16 x 10 9/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2005.200

A detail from the museum

In addition to working as a watercolorist, John White Abbott served professionally as an apothecary and surgeon.

Collection credit

Gift of the Painting and Drawing Society of The Cleveland Museum of Art

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lemonedes, Heather. "Quintessentially British." Cleveland Art (July/August 2007).
• Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.

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.