Tithe Barn, Great Coxwell, Berkshire

Executed in watercolour, the painting employs a restrained palette of muted tones, allowing the stone texture and surrounding vegetation to emerge through loose, gestural brushwork. Piper’s handling of the medium captures the roughness of the masonry and the softness of the grass, creating a balance between detail and atmospheric suggestion.

Commissioned for the Recording Britain project, the piece was produced during the early years of World War II to document threatened elements of the national environment. The initiative, overseen by Sir Kenneth Clark and financed by the Pilgrim Trust, enlisted artists to capture sites of cultural significance. The watercolour now belongs to the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Recording Britain scheme excluded Northern Ireland and limited parts of Wales, focusing on English locales perceived as vulnerable to wartime change. Piper’s contribution reflects both a wartime urgency to preserve visual records of disappearing rural heritage and a broader effort to sustain traditional British artistic practices under the constraints of conflict.