Near Ripley, Surrey

After more than 20 years in Australia, Ebenezer Wake Cook returned to England in 1873 to pursue a full-time career as a painter. His small-scale landscape watercolours – such as this evocation of spring in a densely wooded landscape with children picking bluebells – can be particularly enchanting. The artist has paid careful attention to the individual trees with their ivy-clad trunks, and foliage in varying stages of growth. ‘He has the power of throwing a rare charm over the landscape’, as one critic remarked of Cook. ‘He is exceedingly happy in his views of winding valleys stretching away softly into the distance.’