Yale Center for British Art

Creator:: John Linnell, 1792–1882, British
Title:: Hanson Toot, View in Dovedale
Date:: 1815, reworked, 1846, 1854, and 1870
Materials & Techniques:: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:: 24 1/2 x 35 1/2 inches (62.2 x 90.2 cm)
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:: Public Domain
Accession Number:: B1981.25.426
Gallery Label:: Hanson Toot is a small mountain is Dovedale, Derbyshire, which received brief mention in Isaac Walton’s classic book on fishing, The Compleat Angler (1653). In 1814 a young John Linnell was commissioned by Samuel Bagster, a Baptist publisher, to make an illustrated edition of Walton’s Angler, and he set off to tour the sites mentioned in the book. From the drawings and oil studies in Dovedale (one of which is shown elsewhere on this floor), Linnell made landscape paintings for exhibition that sold to a new clientele of urban professionals and, increasingly, new industrialists. This elegiac view of Hanson Toot was made in 1815 but retouched by Linnell each time it changed hands in 1846, 1854, and finally in 1870. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016