Signed l.r.: D.P.Bliss

Oil on canvas, 77.5 by 103 cm (30 ½ by 40 1/2 ins)

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1937, no.134

The 1930s coincided with a revival of farming and rural subjects in work by a number of British painters, much of which were nostalgic evocations of a rustic world that was fast disappearing under the effects of mechanisation. Such subjects were exhibited to great acclaim at the Royal Academy Summer exhibitions in the middle of the decade, with well-known examples including those by Gilbert Spencer and James Bateman (the latter of whom was the son of a farmer). Bliss’s painting is strongly in this tradition and was itself exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1937. Bliss, who had been a direct contemporary of Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden at the Royal College of Art was a leading wood engraver of the 1920s and 1930s and rose to become principal of Glasgow School of Art. Rural subjects like these are common in his later work in particular, often painted in the area of Derbyshire where he settled and spent the summer months.