Thomas Rowlandson London 1756-1827

Rowlandson regularly visited Cornwall in order to see his friend Matthew Michell from the 1790s until Michell's death in 1819. Michell, a banker, was one of the artist's closest friends during this period and Rowlandson stayed with him at his estate at Hengar in Cornwall and also frequently visited him at his London address, Grove House near Enfield. Michell was also probably Rowlandson's most important patron, owning over five hundred and fifty watercolours at the time of his death.

Michell's country house, Hengar House, was six miles north of Bodmin and consequently Rowlandson had many opportunities to sketch in the surrounding countryside and most of his important landscape drawings are of Cornish subjects. The River Camel passes through the ground of Hengar House on its way to the sea at Wadebridge. The identity of the subject is confirmed by an inscription on the old original mount which read 'River Camel.'

The present work is one of the most important of Rowlandson's landscape watercolours. The intertwining tree branches and the curving line of the party crossing the river are typical of the roccoco feel to many of Rowlandson's landscape watercolours. Another version of this watercolour with some differences, signed and dated 1795, is recorded in a private English collection (see John Hayes, Thomas Rowlandson, 1792, pl.103, p.168). The artist drew another view of the River Camel which was engraved in 1812 (see Joseph Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, 1880, vol.11, p.242, ill) as part of a series, Views in Cornwall