Page 34 - James Ward - A Lioness with a Heron

struggle that is further emphasised by the surrounding gnarled and fallen tree trunks, a classical
arrangement for forms and gestures, possibly inspired by Ward’s careful study of the Elgin marbles,
which by 1810 had already transformed his horse portraiture. In Gordale Scar (Fig. 1), which Ward
worked on between 1811 and 1814, he expanded his elemental landscape to epic proportions. He
deliberately manipulated the topography of the West Yorkshire site by not only moving the waterfall,
but also by raising the limestone cliffs to merge with the lowering skies, allowing only a bare glowing
window of visible sky. To anchor his vertiginous composition Ward added herds of cattle and deer in
the left foreground, and a pair of battling stags and a dominant white bull in the right foreground.

Two years later, when Ward painted Lioness with a Heron, he used several of the same techniques he had
refined in Gordale Scar. However, in the later work Ward made the lioness and heron primary and their
landscape setting secondary, effectively inverting the thrust of his 1814 composition. He set the lioness
and heron against a high horizon with only a partial expanse of sky which emphasises underscores not
only the dramatic impact of their actions, but also the landscape setting. Ward managed to include a
variety of topography and textures in Lioness with a Heron, from which the viewer can also infer the
successive action of his scene. For example, Ward included the reeds and cattails of the immediate
foreground to define the flat riverbank occupied by the animals, which he painted in an almost
sculptural impasto. In the middle ground, Ward used darker pigments and spare brushstrokes for the
wooded outcrop where the lioness takes cover to devour her prey. Finally, using loose brushstrokes of
paint mixed with increasing amounts of turpentine, and in some places, possibly applied directly onto
the basic ground, Ward painted the jagged mountaintops and scudding storm clouds of the
background, which frame the lioness’s turned head and hint at the threat she senses.

Ward also used a similar painterly technique and sense of arrested movement in his horse subjects, such
as A Grey Charger in a Landscape,50 where Ward carefully described the specific features of a Cossack
horse, including its dappled grey markings, and the typically prominent bone structure of its head,
knees and hooves. Ward used looser and more expressive dabs and swirls of oil paint for the horse’s
windswept tail and mane, and thinner pigments applied in still looser brushstrokes for the spare, but
atmospheric landscape. Ward also applied this expressive technique to his dog and hunting subjects,
such as A terrier, stoat and dead rabbit in a rocky landscape51 painted in 1812, which shows the same
voluminous use of paint in the animals, freer thinner brushstrokes in the landscape, and elevated horizon

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