1940
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
The Temple and the Obelisk, Chiswick House is a 1940 watercolor by Archibald Standish Hartrick, a Impressionism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
The painting features a serene landscape with a prominent obelisk on the left and a temple-like structure on the right. The obelisk is tall and slender, while the temple has a domed roof and columns. The scene is set amidst lush greenery, with trees and bushes surrounding the structures. The artist's use of watercolour creates a soft, dreamy quality to the image. In the foreground, the artist has included some subtle details, such as the texture of the stone and the play of light on the foliage. The overall effect is one of tranquility and elegance. If you're interested in exploring more works by the artist who created this piece, you might want to look up Archibald Standish Hartrick.
A watercolour by Archibald Standish Hartrick from 1940 depicts Chiswick House and its obelisk within the Recording Britain project, a wartime initiative to document sites of national significance across England. Commissioned by the Ministry of Labour and National Service with support from the Pilgrim Trust, the scheme aimed to preserve visual records of landscapes, architecture, and rural life amid concerns over wartime destruction and rapid modernization. The work reflects the broader effort to capture a perceived vanishing British identity through topographical art.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Archibald Standish Hartrick (7 August 1864 – 1 February 1950) was a Scottish painter known for the quality of his lithographic work.
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