Peter de Wint (1784-1849) [Aw311]
RANDALL’S MILL, NINE ELMS, LONDON
Watercolour (H. 21 cm, W. 32 cm)
Situated between Battersea and Lambeth in south-west London, the Nine Elms area was described in 1838 as ‘a low swampy district occasionally overflowed by the River Thames [whose] osier beds, pollards and windmille and the river give it a Dutch effect’. Osiers are small willows which were coppiced to provide the long, flexible shoots used to weave baskets, and Randall’s mill, which had been grinding corn from the surrounding farms since at least 1770, was the largest of three in the district. The 1838 description was written at the time of the construction of the London to Southampton railway, and thereafter the rural idyll depicted in this scene began to disappear.
The date of this work is not known, and a chronology for the work of Peter De Wint is difficult to establish because many of his watercolours are undated, and his style remained fairly constant between the 1820s and 1840s. He was born in 1784 into a family of Dutch extraction, and was apprenticed to John Raphael Smith (1751–1812), the mezzotint engraver and portrait painter. A fellow apprentice was William Hilton, and they later lived together in Broad Street, Golden Square, where John Varley (see cat. no. 15) also lived. De Wint was influenced by Varley’s style and he encountered the work of Thomas Girtin (see cat. no. 11) and others at Dr Monro’s academy. Randall’s Mill was also painted by John Varley: Randall’s Mill, Nine Elms, looking towards Vauxhall Bridge (1830) is in the collection of the Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton & Hove. It is a more detailed, highly finished work than De Wint’s.
This watercolour is characteristic of De Wint’s wide, shallow panoramas of the English landscape, often including river banks and harvesting scenes, and painted with broad washes in a warm, rich colour palette.
Exhibited: Sotheby’s, London, Watercolours from Winchester College, 1988, no. 10
Provenance: Gift of Harry Collison, 1940