Signed l.r.: Ethelbert White

Watercolour over pencil, 32.5 by 42 cm (12 ¾ by 16 ½ ins)

Provenance: acquired from Michael Parkin Fine Art Ltd by Luke Gertler, probably in the 1980s

White’s landscape pictures of the 1920s are some of the most instantly recognisable of the period. One of the leading printmakers of the time (he was a founder-member of the English Wood Engraving Society in 1925), such works are remarkable in their ability to imbue everyday subjects with an unusual sense of poetry and lyricism. Peyton Skipwith has appropriately described him as “a draughtsman with an engraver’s eye”. This busy farmyard scene is a fine example of one such 1920s work.