The Livermore Tombs, Barnston, Essex
1940
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1940
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
The Livermore Tombs, Barnston, Essex is a 1940 watercolor by Kenneth Rowntree, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
Kenneth Rowntree painted the quiet churchyard in Barnston, Essex around 1940. His watercolour shows the Livermore family tombstones lined up together. The scene feels plain at first glance, but the dates and names on the stones tell a quiet tragedy. Four daughters died young—one at fourteen, another thrown from a horse at twenty-two. Their deaths came in a sad chain over just thirteen years. Rowntree’s painting keeps the mood simple, yet the story behind the stones lingers. His work also records how these churchyards looked before big changes in the 1950s and 60s. See more of Kenneth Rowntree’s work at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
A watercolour by Kenneth Rowntree depicts a grassy churchyard in Barnston, Essex, featuring four tombstones inscribed with the names and dates of four Livermore daughters who died young between 1827 and 1841. The work records the gravestones' inscriptions and their arrangement within the churchyard, framed by a wooden fence, trees, and part of a building in the background, and is signed by the artist. Created in 1940 as part of the Recording Britain project, the drawing documents the appearance of a typical country churchyard before mid-20th-century clearances removed many such sites and…
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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