On a Fine Day

Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes was a Canadian born painter based predominantly in the UK. This work evokes an idealised country scene set within rolling hills. The rural setting may be influenced by Forbe’s immediate surroundings at her home in Newlyn in south-west Cornwall, where she lived most of her adult life.

This piece aims to blend the beauty of landscape with the beautiful figures, lending it an unreal, mythical air. Paintings which depicted an imaginary medieval past were popular in this period, as they offered escapism from the industrial realities and increasingly stressful pace of modern life.