Vivary Park, Taunton
1941
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1941
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Vivary Park, Taunton is a 1941 watercolor by Raymond Teague Cowern, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
This sketch shows a quiet street with two big houses and a church tower in the distance. The buildings have simple shapes—flat roofs, small windows, and bare trees in front. A few people walk down the middle, and the colors are mostly soft browns, grays, and pale blues. The artist signed it "R.T. Cowern, 1941," so it’s a quick watercolor, not a polished painting. The loose lines make it feel like a snapshot of a moment, not a finished scene. If you like this style, check out the Victoria and Albert Museum for more sketches like this.
This watercolour by Raymond Teague Cowern, dated 1941, depicts Vivary Park in Taunton, showing the park gates with houses visible beyond. It was created as part of the "Recording Britain" project, a wartime initiative led by Sir Kenneth Clark to document the British landscape and its changing character during the early 1940s. The scheme employed artists to record scenes of national identity, focusing on English locations such as market towns, rural landscapes, and historic sites. The work is part of a collection of over 1,500 pieces produced by 97 artists between 1940 and 1943.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Raymond Teague Cowern painted quiet watercolors of mid-century Worcestershire life during the Second World War.
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