The Wood Gatherers (1869): Art, History and Details

The Wood Gatherers (1869) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John William North (British, 1842–1924).

The work and its context

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

John William North’s watercolors of the rural landscape of Somerset unite the seemingly contradictory states of minutely rendered detail with atmospheric effects. Herbert Alexander, the artist’s biographer, described the artist’s interpretation of nature as similar to that of a poet, suggesting rather than describing: "In watercolor and oil an effect of intricate detail is found on examination to be quite illusive—multitudinous form is conjured by finding and losing it in endless hide-and-seek till the eye accepts infinity."

Object facts

• Title: The Wood Gatherers
• Date: 1869
• Creator attribution: John William North (British, 1842–1924)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor and gouache with scratch-away and touches of shell gold
• Dimensions: Sheet: 40.5 x 56.3 cm (15 15/16 x 22 3/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2013.239

A detail from the museum

In addition to his artistic career, John William North championed social justice for the agricultural laboring class in England, campaigning for decent rural sanitation and social housing.

Collection credit

Gift in memory of Helen Borowitz

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.