In the Park at Packington
Heneage Finch, 4th Earl of Aylesford British
Not on view
Active as a statesman and patron of British cultural institutions, Aylesford was also a gifted amateur draftsman and etcher. Before he became earl in 1777, the artist studied drawing as an undergraduate at Oxford. The strong ink outlines and assured application of wash in this mature drawing suggest a date in the mid-1780s. Italian precedents influenced his draftsmanship, but his expressive response to a tree found on his Warwickshire estate echoes Rembrandt. (Aylesford collected the seventeenth-century Dutch master’s prints and learned to etch in a similar manner.) This drawing anticipates the poetic landscapes of the next century’s Romantic era, such as the work by Samuel Palmer that hangs nearby.
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