Sir Alfred East, R.A., R.I., P.R.B.A., R.P.E. (1844-1913)

Asked by the Italian critic, Mario Borsa, what constituted his favourite landscape Alfred East answered ‘without hesitation’, “The meadows by the river!” (Emporium, June 1900, p.409). Scenes like that in the present example were repeatedly found in East’s explorations of the home counties and the Cotswolds, and anglers often constitute their only human presence. The motif originated in his celebrated A Haunt of Ancient Peace 1896 (Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest) in which a fisherman retreats from the mill pond at Upper Swell at dusk. East’s palette, in all of these grand evocations of the English countryside was carefully tuned to the time of year and time of day, and in the present instance the subject is as much a golden autumn, as it is ‘meadows by the river’. Scale would infer that this is an exhibition piece, and further research may determine if it was originally shown under a less descriptive title. KMc.