Mountain Landscape with Cattle and Resting Herdsman

Rathbone was a Cheshire-based artist who was known as the “Manchester Wilson” and was a friend of Julius Caesar Ibbetson and George Morland. He painted many views in the Lake District. This view has recently been identified from an inscribed watercolour of the same spot by another artist. Rathbone’s sharp lighting and fresh colour convey some of the atmosphere of the mountainous Lakeland scenery, but this is a carefully composed painting, worked up in the studio from sketches. Rathbone exaggerates picturesque incident and tames and civilises the landscape.