The Cock Tavern, Cheam Common

The Cock Tavern, Cheam Common
The Cock Tavern, Cheam Common
The Cock Tavern, Cheam Common
Crown Copyright: UK Government Art Collection
title=Credit line
Artist
Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
Title
The Cock Tavern, Cheam Common
Date
c.1745-47 (undated)
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Metric: 83.8 x 144.2 cm
Imperial: 33 x 56 3/4 in.
Accession Number
GAC 15029
Wilson Online Reference
P15A
Description
The view is probably south towards Banstead Downs, Surrey. Cheam Common opens out beyond it, while in the distance to the right the building is probably Cheam House.
Exhibited
Agnew 1979; London, Cardiff and New Haven, 1982-83 (9)
Provenance
Col. M.H. Grant; Mr & Mrs Carr of Petersham; bt Ronald Lee and sold to Leggatt Brothers, London 1954; Anon sale, Christie's 18 June 1976 (112), bt Agnews; purchased May 1980 by H.M. Government
Signature/inscription
Unsigned; no inscription
Subject
The 'Cock Tavern' was probably the Cock Inn, a well-known country coaching inn on the London to Brighton road, located in Sutton, the neighbouring parish to Cheam. It stood beside an unexceptional area of common land about 12 miles south-west of central London. In 1755 the inn became the Cock Hotel, catering for the newly-constructed London to Brighton turnpike.
Versions
See 'Links' tab
Related Works by Other Artists
Thomas Rowlandson, The Cock Hotel, Sutton, etching and aquatint, 1789
Critical commentary
As Solkin has noted, this was apparently the most popular of Wilson's early landscapes, to judge by the fact that it survives in four versions. The composition and colour are close to Esias van de Velde's Wooded River Landscape (Sotheby's 14 April 2011 (108)). Certainly the work shows Wilson at his most Netherlandish and was probably intended for a new group of middle-class buyers whose taste in landscape tended more towards Dutch-style views than to the grandiose pastorals of the classical tradition. Solkin has also extensively discussed the social and economic implications inherent in the contrast between the tumbledown inn with its decaying picket fence and resting peasants on the left and the newly-built house with its neat enclosure and strolling bourgeoisie opposite.
Bibliography
WGC, p. 171 (unpublished version of pl. 30c); The Connoisseur, December 1954; Col. M.H. Grant, The Old English Landscape Painters, 1957, vol. 2, pl. 64; Solkin 1982, pp. 31-33, 150; Solkin 2015, pp. 118-19
Link to WG Constable Archive Record