Interior, Black Chapel, North End, near Dunmow, Essex
1942
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1942
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Interior, Black Chapel, North End, near Dunmow, Essex is a 1942 watercolor by Kenneth Rowntree, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
Kenneth Rowntree painted the inside of a small chapel in Essex around 1942. He used watercolour for this quiet scene. The work was part of a project to record Britain’s buildings during a tense time. Rowntree stayed alone in the chapel for days. He said the empty space felt full of unseen company. The building reminded him of the Quaker meeting-houses where he worshipped. Look up the Victoria and Albert Museum to see more of his watercolours.
Kenneth Rowntree’s watercolour depicts the interior of the Black Chapel in Essex, a Quaker-influenced meeting place whose atmosphere he described as both solitary and populated by an intangible presence. The work was created as part of the Recording Britain project, which aimed to document sites in Britain threatened by wartime destruction or neglect. Rowntree rendered the chapel’s prayer boards with meticulous detail, a choice that drew criticism but may have reflected his Quaker emphasis on quiet reflection. The painting belongs to a wartime collection of topographical studies commissioned…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Kenneth Rowntree painted quiet British places in watercolour around 1940, from barn-stacked Essex fields to the carved oak pews of Caernarvonshire chapels.
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