Gordale Scar

landscape

James Ward tried to express his own emotionally charged faith through a masterpiece of natural observation, his gigantic Gordale Scar finished in 1813. Here the towering expanse of rock and thundering cataract, set beneath a stormy sky, takes on a symbolism of its own. The encircling amphitheatre of the Scar becomes a microcosm, and the beasts who graze or lock antlers before it - few of which had actually roamed there since much earlier times - emphasize its primordial state.

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About the Artist

James Ward

1769 – 1859

English painter and engraver. Until about the end of the century he painted mainly anecdotal genre scenes in the manner of his brother-in-law George Morland, but he then turned to the paintings of animals in landscape settings for which he is remembered. They are often dramatic and Romantic in character and their rich colouring was influenced by Rubens (Bulls Fighting, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, c. 1804). His taste for natural grandeur and the Sublime often led him to work on a large scale, as in the enormous Gordale Scar (Tate Gallery, London, 1811-15). Ward had many admirers, including Delacroix and Géricault, but he lived in retirement from the 1830s and ended his life in poverty. His brother William (1766-1826) was an engraver.

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