The cow shed

William Henry Hunt is a key figure in 19th-century English watercolour painting, his work defining the transition from the 18th-century landscape style of clean, transparent washes to the bolder and more innovative use of the medium in the Victorian period. During the 1830s he began producing a series of elaborately worked compositions recording the ramshackle interiors of mills, stables and workshops, which appeared strikingly original in their aspect of unaffected barnyard realism. This painting is a splendid example. The figure of the old rustic, whose earthiness and immediacy of expression are brilliantly captured, adds human drama. He appears both fatigued and annoyed by the scrutiny to which he is being subjected.