The Cotton Works and Bridge at Cromford by William Day
May 28, 2013 2 Comments
In my last post I mentioned how few depictions I had found of the Derwent Valley Mills, both in travel diaries and in amateur sketchbooks. This isn’t to say that the mills were completely ignored by artists, as Joseph Wright’s oil of Cromford Mill shows. William Day also sketched the mills on his 1789 tour of the County. Derby Museum holds this lovely watercolour.
I have been tracking down the Day watercolours from 1789 that aren’t in public collections. Here is The Cotton Works and Bridge at Cromford, Derbyshire which went through Sotheby’s auction house in 1975 – sadly this black and white scan is the best I have found. It has an unusual composition which shows Cromford Mill on the right and Cromford Bridge on the left, seen through Scarthin Rock.
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