‘Crossing the Brook’ by Eyre Crowe A.R.A. (1899)
Medium: oil
Size: 10 x 14 inches
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1899; Manchester, 1899; London Guildhall, 1900
Current owner: Private collection
This scene was begun in the Laclose Valley near Boulogne in October 1898. The woman carrying a child was drawn from the ‘slatternly peasant woman’, as Eyre Crowe described her, living in a nearby farmhouse.
It was one of the paintings exhibited at the London Guildhall and then auctioned at Christie’s in London on 24 February 1900 for the Artists’ War Fund charity. The advertisement for the sale in The Times (20 February 1900) explained that the artists had donated the pictures, and the proceeds would be distributed for the benefit of the widows, children and relatives of soldiers engaged in the war in South Africa.
The painting has been in the same family ownership since perhaps the 1930s.
Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) 