The Drinking Trough

Swanwick first studied in Liverpool, then at the Slade under Legros and Fred Brown, and finally at the Académie Julian in Paris. He lived at Wilmington in East Sussex, and was known as the painter of England's downland. His watercolour landscapes especially proved immensely popular, and his work was seen at the Royal Academy regularly between 1889 and 1904. At his death one obituarist wrote that 'charachteristically, it was the mist-tempered, tranquil sunshine of the Sussex hills and combes - which never, even at high summer noon, quite loses its golden vestige - that evoked the finest things in Swanwick's art'.