Hillside cottage

Helen Allingham focused increasingly on cottage subjects following her move in 1881 to the small village of Sandhills in Surrey. Inspired by her love for the unspoilt character of the English countryside and its vernacular buildings, Allingham’s watercolours were phenomenally successful among the urban middle classes before the First World War brought an end to her popularity. Behind her sugar-coated vision of rural life was a desire to record old cottages threatened by progress and to commemorate traditional ways of life that were disappearing before the artist’s eyes.