A Recent Commission

A moorland farm which hosts visitors all year round has prints of some of my moorland paintings on the walls of their holiday cottages. The cottages, adapted from old stone outbuildings, have a stunning vista looking east, across the Lynher and Inny valleys and on to Dartmoor, 20 miles away on the distant horizon. 

A German couple have been coming in both winter and summer for many years bringing with them their two small wiry terriers. 

They had bought one of my prints that hung on the cottage walls that depicted a view of the old Kilmar Quarry railway. The farm owners had commissioned that painting because in Victorian times the railway had run just above the farm and was part of the fascinating local history. 

Most of the granite sets which had supported the old rails still lie paired in parallel lines for a mile along the path of the old track. The iron rails had long been lifted and melted down to make war munitions in 1917 during WW1. 

I painted the view looking across the railway track and down to the farmhouse with one of the original 0-6-0 steam engines hauling wagons along the line, just as the scene might have looked 150 years ago, in 1875. 

The German couple, now on friendly terms after so many visits, were invited into the farmhouse to see the original painting. They asked after the artist and as a result they got in touch with me to see if I might paint a landscape for them. They wanted to be reminded of their regular trips to this part of Cornwall they so loved.

The main thing they wanted to see in the painting was Caradon Hill. I was somewhat surprised since the long view of the hill is an unremarkable dome whose main distinguishing feature is a huge TV transmission mast on its highest part. The mast which serves East Cornwall and South Devon is a domineering and dissonant presence in an otherwise relatively timeless moorland landscape. 

But they definitely wanted the mast in the picture – not what I expected!

They explained it was the first thing they saw as they approached Cornwall from Germany, coming down through Devon on the A30, and it always felt like some sort of welcoming marker.

After discussing it further I could see the possibility of finding an interesting area on the side of Stowes Hill among the hawthorn trees, granite ruins and old mineworks, taking in a more distant view of Caradon Hill to the south but with the hill immediately recognisable by its mast.

I said I would paint a couple of studies of different views just to see if they wanted me to go ahead. I would send images of the studies to them when they got back to Germany, and if they liked an idea, then I’d go ahead with a full canvas.

Then they said they really wanted their two beloved terriers to be part of the painting, and maybe there could be a few Galloway cattle grazing amongst the bracken-covered hillside somewhere in the middle distance. 

Ideas for the composition kept shifting in my mind as more things became included in the final vision that they wanted to see. 

We agreed a price for the painting and I said I would paint two different studies so they could give me feedback on my ideas for possible compositions and to say what their preferences were.

They told me they loved the rust colour of the bracken set against the patchwork greens of the moorland floor, so the idea formed of a painting in late autumn when the bracken had turned, with the colours  brightly lit by a late October afternoon sun. With only a little artist’s licence, I was able to bring into view the distant engine house of Phoenix mine on the left, and in the foreground on the right, a wall supporting a well-established hawthorn tree casting a pool of shade over part of the bracken. This was the setting in which the terriers, Boomer and Lotte, would be exploring.


As an alternative idea I suggested a more level composition closer to Minions, set at the base of Caradon Hill, amongst hawthorn trees looking across to the ruins of Wheal Jenkin. This gave me scope to paint Boomer and Lotte running together on the open grass. Their frolicking antics were in the foreground set against the autumn bracken further back between the hawthorn trees. The dome of Caradon Hill would rise behind them with the mining ruins of Wheal Jenkin on its slope.

I sent images of the two studies to Germany. They chose the composition set on the side of Stowes Hill, with Caradon Hill more in the distance.

That gave me eight weeks to paint the final picture on canvas ready for when the couple arrived in late December, and with enough time for the paint to dry.

It was delivered on December 28th, when they arrived with Boomer and Lotte to see the new year in Cornwall, and I was relieved when they said they loved it.