Woodcutters at Park Place, Henley, the river Thames beyond

A blue-tinged rendering of the distant Thames anchors Havell’s watercolor of a scene near Henley—a view created when an estate owner cut a new road through the woods. Men working on a felled tree and a woman resting in the sun with her baby enliven the foreground. In 1827 Havell exhibited this work at the Old Watercolour Society’s annual London exhibition, signaling his reengagement with the English landscape after a spending a decade in China and India. Tinged with autumnal colors, the trees indicate the changing seasons, while water from a recent rain sparkles along a track in the road. This device directs our eyes toward the distant Thames and reminds of the underlying natural rhythms that sustain the landscape. Havell used both scratching and applied touches of gouache to create the highlights that help define water, cloth, and bark.