LAND INTO LANDSCAPE

William Marlow's impressive Distant View of Bridlington Bay and Flamborough Head (c.1763, Fig. 11) is a panoramic topographical view of the Yorkshire coastal town, its surrounding common field countryside and the bay beyond. Marlow took this view south-west of Bridlington, looking across the town's quite complex common field landscape which consisted at this time of a large expanse of common moorland and a four-field system of open arable land. The painting provides ‘a telling record of the bleak Yorkshire coastline’ that was found only a few miles from Burton Agnes Hall, for which it was painted.1 Its delicately lit sky boldly takes up more than half the canvas, anticipating a compositional mode that early in the following century becomes a staple for the dramatic expression of the expansive reaches of the common field landscape. Beneath the sky, we see an extensive and largely deserted landscape, apart from a solitary figure on horseback travelling along a lane that cuts across the centre of the painting. Much of the land is freely depicted and gives the impression of being uncultivated other than the presence of a number of corn-stooks in the middle distance of the painting.

Marlow (1740–1813) was a pupil of Samuel Scott, a landscape painter known for his seascapes, which might account for the dramatic, elemental sweep of Distant View of Bridlington Bay.