Middle Mill, Wandsworth

Location

Country: Luxembourg
City: Luxembourg
Place: British Embassy

This work by George Vincent, which is thought to have been early in his career, before he settled in London, shows two young men swimming in water, in front of a mill and several farm buildings.

Vincent painted numerous views of picturesque cottages within idealised rural settings, often including figures and cattle. Based in Norwich during his early career, many of Vincent’s painted views features the River Yare in Norfolk. His scenes of mills and bathers are few, although his oil painting of figures bathing in the River Yare was sold through Bonham’s in 2000 and his drawing of the ‘Old Mill on the Yar’ sold through Sotheby’s in 1972.

Landscape painter George Vincent was born in Norwich; the son of a weaver and shawl manufacturer. He was educated at Norwich grammar school, before becoming a pupil of John Crome. Vincent later exhibited work at the Norwich Society of Artists and in London at the Royal Academy, British Institution, Society of Painters in Water Colours and the Society of British Artists. By 1814 he had moved to London. He married the daughter of a doctor in 1822 and the couple moved to a large house in Kentish Town. Soon afterwards Vincent found himself heavily in debt and on 27 December 1824 he wrote ‘I am at this moment and have been for three weeks a prisoner in the Fleet’. He was released in February 1827 but died a few years later in Bath, aged 36.

Places

Norfolk, England: natural features

Subjects

ladder, cart, bathing, swimming, topography, landscape C19th, genre, grass, tree, duck, man, woman, fence, pool, house, mill, tiled roof

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

George Vincent (1796 - 1831)

Title

Middle Mill, Wandsworth

Date

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 65.00 cm, width: 89.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the Leger Galleries, August 1954

Provenance

With Leger Galleries, London; from whom purchased in August 1954

GAC number

2831