Wheat stooks, English countryside
c1890. Watercolor and pencil on heavy gauge watercolor paper, 11 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches, (298 x 248 mm) the full sheet. In good condition with fresh, detailed brushwork and saturated pigments. An unfinished work with lovely primo pensiero. One spot of brown discoloration in the right area of the sky on the recto, otherwise in good condition with minor toning and handling wear.
The purpose of a stook (or "stooking") is to dry unthreshed grain while protecting it from vermin until it is brought into long-term storage. The unthreshed grain also cures while in a stook. In England, sheaves were commonly stacked in stooks of twelve.
Sophia Beale was born in London in 1837. Her father was the surgeon Lionel John Beale, and her sister, Ellen Brooker Beale, was also an artist and the two sisters would often work together. Both Sophia and Ellen Beale attended Queen's College, London and took lessons at a private art school run by the artist Matthew Leigh. They spent considerable periods in the National Gallery and the British Museum copying Old Masters and antiquities. From 1860 to 1867 the two sisters had a studio in Covent Garden on Long Acre. In 1869, and again in 1872, Beale traveled to Paris where she studied at Charles Joshua Chaplin's studio. When she returned to London, Beale used the money she had earned to open an art school on Albany Street near Regent's Park. The techniques she had learned in Paris were in considerable demand at the time. In 1889 she was among the 2,000 signatories to a declaration supporting women's suffrage and she also advocated for the Royal Academy and the universities to allow greater access to women.
Item number: 2199
Price: $650.00
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