Artwork
Falls of Gotha
Falls of Gotha is a print by the Romanticist artist Edward Price. It dates from 1834 and is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
About this work
Overview
Edward Price’s print Falls of Gotha is one of twenty‑one images bound in a brown leather volume that pairs illustrations with accompanying text. The book formed part of the Lennox‑Boyd collection, a private assemblage of roughly fifty thousand British mezzotints that entered the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2015 through an inheritance‑tax transfer.
Subject & Meaning
The image depicts a mist‑shrouded forest that opens onto a cascading waterfall. Dark, tangled trees dominate the foreground, while a rainbow arches above the falling water, which spills over rocky ledges into a tranquil lake. Soft, clouded skies merge with distant mountains, evoking the Romantic fascination with the sublime power and beauty of nature.
Technique & Style
Price employs loose, sketch‑like lines to convey the movement of water and foliage, allowing forms to suggest rather than delineate. This approach reflects a period when artists emphasized atmospheric effects and the emotional resonance of natural scenes, using a fluid hand to capture the fleeting qualities of light and mist.
History & Provenance
The print was housed in the Lennox‑Boyd collection, which also contained 18th‑century picture frames, antique women’s shoes, fans, printed handkerchiefs, ephemera, and watercolors acquired in the 1970s. The collection was amassed by Sir John Lennox‑Boyd, who expanded his Oxford firm, Sanders of Oxford, into a leading dealer of fine prints, maps, engravings, and twentieth‑century etchings, and authored works on theatre prints and George Stubbs.
Context
Falls of Gotha aligns with the broader 19th‑century interest in landscape as a vehicle for expressing the awe of untamed environments. Its inclusion in a mixed‑media volume illustrates the era’s practice of compiling prints with textual commentary, catering to collectors who valued both visual and scholarly aspects of natural history and picturesque art.
Own this work as a print
Artist & collection
Artist
Edward Price was a British printmaker in the early 1800s who etched Norwegian landscapes from a trip in 1834.
