View of Bristol

Patrick Nasmyth's View of Bristol of 1827 shows the Scottish landscape painter who settled in England applying his characteristic approach — intimate, observational, closely related to the Dutch seventeenth-century tradition of Ruisdael and Hobbema — to one of England's most significant provincial cities. Bristol in the 1820s was still a major commercial and maritime center, its skyline defined by church spires and the masts of ships in its harbor, and Nasmyth captures this combination of urban and natural landscape with the modest directness that distinguishes his best work. He was nicknamed 'the English Hobbema' for his mastery of the wooded, lush, quietly observed landscape idiom. The Wolverhampton Art Gallery's picture extends his practice to urban topography, showing that his sensitivity to light and atmosphere could encompass the city as readily as the countryside.

Nasmyth employs the warm tonality and careful observation of trees, foliage, and light that characterize his best landscape work, here applied to a cityscape with a distant view of Bristol's rooftops and spires. The handling is soft and atmospheric, with foliage loosely but convincingly rendered. The sky provides warm overhead light that gives the whole scene a golden, afternoon quality.