Cowper at Olney [Cowper Walking in the Gardens at Weston Underwood, Buckinghamshire], c.1866. Oil on canvas. 20 x 28 3/8 inches (51 x 72 cm). Collection of the Cowper and Newton Museum, Olney, accession no. OLNCN:633. Reproduced from Art UK for purposes of non-commercial research or private study only. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
William Cowper (1731-1800), the subject of this painting, was an eighteenth-century English poet. Marks exhibited Cowper at Olney at Ernest Gambart's French Gallery in 1866, no. 158, showing Cowper walking and meditating in the gardens at Weston Underwood, Buckinghamshire, accompanied by his three pet hares. Cowper's three hares may possibly relate back to Albrecht Durer's famous woodcut The Holy Family with Three Hares of c.1498. The three hares here are traditional symbols of Christian love associated with the Holy Trinity and the miraculous fertility of the Virgin Mary. In Marks's painting Cowper has a pensive look as he strolls along a gravel path, a book in his right hand and with his left hand tucked under his chin. He wears an unusual cap. The background of the picture was based on studies he had made earlier in 1862 in the large "old-fashioned and picturesque garden" next door to where Marks's friend Charles Keene lived at the White Cottage, Hammersmith (Marks, Sketches, 120). A house can be seen in the right background behind Cowper. He had moved to Olney in 1767 following the death of his father, invited there by the Curate-in-charge, John Newton, who shared his house with the poet. From 1768 to 1786 Cowper lived at Orchard House on the market place in Olney. Cowper preferred to write his works in a small writing hut in the open air in a garden or park. He initially wrote in his garden at Orley and then later in the park at Weston Underwood that was nearby. The Throckmorton family at Weston Underwood Hall allowed Cowper the use of their gardens and park, including a shelter called the Alcove.
When the picture was exhibited at the French Gallery in 1866 it received some recognition. The critic of The Art Journal thought the work a parody of the poet:
Another canvas contains The Garden at Orley, where the poet Cowper and his tame hares "think down hours to moments." "Learning," doubtless, "wiser grows without his books," yet the picture, merely as a picture, might have been both wiser and better if "meditation" had mitigated the opacity of the green sward and the density of the ungainly foliage. Cowper himself is painted as a "guy." The picture may perhaps wear the garb of truth unadorned, yet, however clever, it is but a parody on the poet who penned "The Task" and lines on his "Mother's Portrait" (375).
The Builder, unlike The Art Journal, found the garden landscape conscientiously painted: "Mr. H. S. Marks in a conscientiously represented garden scene At Olney (158), introduces a portrait of the poet Cowper contemplating his pets, the tamed hares" (832).
A. G. Temple, in his The Art of Painting in the Queen's Reign, found this one of the most memorable of Marks's works:
The works that are exceedingly interesting to many, from the hand of this painter, are those to which he gives some such title as A Page of Rabelais, or Cowper at Olney. To me, his truest and best feeling is shown here... The Cowper at Olney I have often wished to see again. I do not know if any larger version exists of this work: I am acquainted only with one, small in size, about 18 × 20, which I saw Christie's in 1888. It was sold then from the collection of Mr. S. D. Schloss; but the trim garden, the old-fashioned arbour, and the touches everywhere that spoke of the appearance a garden would present at the commencement of the last century, were so strikingly an accord with the idea one has of the poet and his surroundings that the remembrance of this little work remains pleasantly with me, and I can see now the frail figure, with its curious, cap and meditating step. [289-90]
Links to Related Material
Bibliography
"Cabinet Pictures at the French Gallery." The Builder XXIV (10 November 1866): 831-32.
Cowper at Olney. Art UK. Web. 24 October 2023.
"Exhibition of Pictures by British Artists – French Gallery." The Art Journal New Series V (1 December 1866): 374-75.
Marks, Henry Stacy. Pen and Pencil Sketches. 1894, 2 vols.
Temple, Alfred George. The Art of Painting in the Queen's Reign. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897.
"Cowper’s Summerhouse and Alcove, Buckinghamshire." The Folly Falneuse. Web. 24 October 2023.
Created 24 October 2023