A Wood Yard on the Thames at Nine Elms

undated

Samuel Scott

Watercolor, graphite and pen and black ink on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper

13 3/4 x 35 1/8 inches (34.9 x 89.2 cm)

This drawing can be identified as the preparatory sketch for a painting, A Wood Yard on the Thames at Nine Elms served as the basis for A Sunset, with a View of Nine Elms (Tate). The south bank of the Thames in the eighteenth century was lined with industries, including the timber yards on the stretch of bank facing Westminster. The yard at Nine Elms is farther upriver, just west of Vauxhall, and looks toward Battersea. Scott records the different types of wood in the yard, from a great trunk to sawn planks; the kiln visible over the roofs of the shed may have been for drying wood. In addition to the meticulous attention Scott pays to the yard itself, he appears to have used this working sheet to record passing small vessels, without particular attention to their scale or placement on the fictitious surface of the water.

B2009.5.3

Inscribed in artist's hand in pen and brown ink upper right : "No.15"; inscribed in graphite lower center: " [ . . . ] "

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, in honor of John Baskett

http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1670326

Related Media

Samuel Scott, A Wood Yard on the Thames at Nine Elms, ca. 1750, watercolor, graphite and pen and black ink Samuel Scott, A Wood Yard on the Thames at Nine Elms, ca. 1750, watercolor, graphite and pen and black ink. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, in honor of John Baskett