View from Orchard Cottage

(click image to enlarge)

View from Orchard Cottage

Thomas Hennell (1903-1945)

Price

£2,750

Signed

Faint pencil drawing of village on reverse

Medium

Watercolour

Dimensions

11 ¼ x 15 ½ inches

Illustrated

Jessica Kilburne, Thomas Hennell,: The Land and the Mind, London: Pimpernel Press, 2021, Page 117

Exhibited

'The Watercolour Tradition in Landscape', Nunnington Hall, Yorkshire, 23 April-30 June 2013;
'A Century of British Art: 1900-1945', Chris Beetles Gallery, 21 June-17 July 2021, No 167

This watercolour by Thomas Hennell, produced in about 1936-37, shows a view from Orchard Cottage, Ridley, Kent, which became the artist’s home following his release from Claybury Mental Hospital, Essex, in 1935. As described by Jessica Kilburn, the cottage was

'a Victorian property which stood across the fields from Ridley Rectory, Hennell’s beloved childhood home ... [It] had been left to the Revd Hennell by one of his parishioners ... who had known the children since their
infancy, and expressed 'the hope that one of them should live there"'
(Jessica Kilburn, Thomas Hennell: The Land and the Mind, London: Pimpernel Press, 2021, page 112, quoting an unpublished reminiscence of Hennell’s sister, Betty)

Hennell gained particular pleasure from the cottage’s garden, which can be seen here from ground level in spring or summer.