A View of Lower Rydal Falls, Cumbria

A View of Lower Rydal Falls, Cumbria

Thomas Fearnley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fearnley visited the Lake District with Charles West Cope in August 1837, and here sketched Lower Rydal Falls from a summer house built to allow a comfortable vantage point. Born in Norway to a merchant father of British parentage, the artist studied with the leading painting Christian Dahl in Dresden and, like his teacher, became a proponent of Romantic naturalism. As a student he sought Scandinavian sites previously considered too rough or barbaric, and remained an inveterate traveler, visiting Italy (1832–35), Switzerland, and England (1836–8). In the latter he focused on subjects in the Lake District and Yorkshire dales, using this sketch to capture the mysterious beauty of sunlight penetrating dense foliage to glisten over moving water.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A View of Lower Rydal Falls, CumbriaA View of Lower Rydal Falls, CumbriaA View of Lower Rydal Falls, CumbriaA View of Lower Rydal Falls, CumbriaA View of Lower Rydal Falls, Cumbria

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.