Trundling the cheese

In the 1870s Robert Thorne Waite’s watercolours displayed a strong affinity with the idylls of Myles Birket Foster, whose works are also in the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection. The older artist even complained in the press that Thorne Waite was copying him. Despite the subsequent development of his technique towards a more direct and broader handling that aimed to preserve the transparency of the medium, Thorne Waite’s vision of the countryside remained essentially rosy. This watercolour illustrates the old custom of cheese rolling on the Sussex Downs in England, with a group of children about to run down the hill to catch the cheese.