Boyne Hill, at Maidenhead in Berkshire, twenty-five miles west of London, was the birthplace of Malcolm Drummond. His father, Canon Arthur Hislop Drummond (died 1925), was vicar of All Saints Church, Boyne Hill from 1876 to 1917, and he and his family lived in the vicarage next to the church. Despite living in London from 1903, Drummond frequently returned to visit the family home at Boyne Hill, and the church, house and garden appear in a number of works. For this view of his parents’ house, Drummond set up his easel in the back courtyard behind the vicarage, to see the point where their home, at the right, joined with the adjacent school buildings, on the left. This might be thought to be one of the least architecturally impressive views of the complex of buildings, especially as the principal focus is on a small, lean-to shed without a door. Since he grew up in these buildings, this shed might have had some personal significance for him, but it is more likely that this choice of viewpoint fits his aesthetic preference for the humble, seen for example in his painting of the backs of houses at Chelsea, 1914 (Southampton City Art Gallery).
1 This shed still exists, and has been converted into an extension of the house (fig.1). The aspects of the buildings in perspective and the positions of the patterns of the black bricks running horizontally along the gabled chimneys are entirely accurate but the minutiae of the architectural detail is lost in the painting’s overall concern with the abstract qualities of colour.