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    The Cock Tavern at Cheam

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    The Cock Tavern at Cheam
    The Cock Tavern at Cheam
    The Cock Tavern at Cheam
    Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Gift of Jeremiah J. Nolan. Photo: Ernest Mayer, Winnipeg Art Gallery
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    Artist
    Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
    Title
    The Cock Tavern at Cheam
    Date
    c.1745 (undated)
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    Metric: 81.2 x 146.5 cm
    Imperial: 32 x 57 11/16 in.
    Collection
    Winnipeg Art Gallery. To license image, click here.
    Accession Number
    G-52-183
    Wilson Online Reference
    P15B
    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
    Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts exhibitions 1942, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bath and Oxford
    Provenance
    Col. M.H. Grant; John Nicholson, New York; Jeremiah J. Nolan; Winnipeg Art Gallery
    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, pp. 76, 171, pl. 30c
    Link to WG Constable Archive Record
    WGC/1/1/34

    Work of Art

    Versions

    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) The Cock Tavern, Cheam Common, UK Government Art Collection
    • Ascribed to Wilson, The Cock Tavern, Cheam, Surrey, Tate, London

    Biographies

    • Colonel Maurice Harold Grant (1872-1962)

    Documents

    • William George Constable, Richard Wilson
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