Not on display
- Artist
- James Ward 1769–1859
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 441 × 318 mm
frame: 600 × 500 × 72 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1942
- Reference
- N05318
Display caption
James Ward was considered to be the greatest animal painter of his day, working with the publisher Boydell on an uncompleted record of the livestock breeds of Britain around 1800. His Gordale Scar (1812?-1814), a vast canvas in the Tate collection, shows a sublime and stormy Yorkshire landscape with a proud white bull apparently protecting his primeval domain. Painted during the Napoleonic Wars it undoubtedly carries a strong patriotic message. This painting of two hanging sides of beef from the same period, while being a Rembrandtesque exercise in the handling of paint, may well have similar connotations. Indeed the heavy 'painterly' quality to the work would have been seen at the time as a particularly British aesthetic trait.
Gallery label, August 2004
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James Ward Cattle-Piece, ? Marylebone Park
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James Ward Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale)
?1812–4, exhibited 1815 -
James Ward A Spaniel Frightening Ducks
1821 -
James Ward The Black Horse
1824 -
James Ward Sketch for ‘Gordale Scar’
1811 -
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date not known -
James Ward View in Tabley Park
1813–8 -
James Ward Sketch for ‘Gordale Scar’
c.1811 -
Thomas Stothard Peace Came Down upon the Earth
date not known -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Ploughing Up Turnips, near Slough (‘Windsor’)
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James Ward The Moment
1831 -
George Morland Outside the Ale-House Door
1792 -
James Ward The Deer Stealer
exhibited 1823 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Entrance of the Meuse: Orange-Merchant on the Bar, Going to Pieces; Brill Church bearing S. E. by S., Masensluys E. by S.
exhibited 1819