The watercolourist Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding (1787-1855) was born in Sowerby, near Halifax, and trained with John Varley. In 1810 he began to exhibit at the Old Water-colour Society, becoming a full member in 1813 and president of the Society from 1831 until his death. Although he painted in oils, his reputation rests on his watercolour landscapes, which were as admired in France as in England; he won a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1824 alongside John Constable and Richard Parkes Bonington.



This work, which was exhibited at the Old Water-colour Society in 1845, is one of several he painted over the course of his career in the environs of Dunster in Somerset. (Other examples include a watercolour exhibited at the OWS in 1826 sold at Christies, 3 July 2018, lot 134, and an oil painted in 1850 now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, inv. no. 8394). In a restricted palette of blues, greens and warm browns, it shows an expansive view of pastures, woodland and rolling hills under a sky filled with scudding clouds, with Dunster castle and church in the middle ground and the distant sea in the background. The technique is highly refined, with sensitive use of scratching out to achieve highlights on the backs of the cows and the vegetation and tree trunks in the foreground.