Thomas Fisher

Thomas Fisher never left his corner of England, sketching the same crumbling cottages and manor houses in Bedfordshire for years. He’d show up at a half-timbered farmhouse at dawn, measure the sagging beams with his fingers, then spend the afternoon getting the brickwork just right, down to the moss between the stones. His watercolors look like someone froze time with a magnifying glass.

You can still walk the roads he painted; start at Old House, Dunstable and see how the ivy crept farther up the wall since 1818.