[From the catalogue-in-progress for “Landscapes & Livestock”, a loan exhibition for Agincourt Homecoming in the Fall of 2015]

WILLIAMS, Fychan [active early 20c]

“Bentley Common, Essex” 

early 20c

watercolor on paper/ 9.2″ x 15.2″

Welsh by birth and educated in London, Fychan Williams (“Fychan” is Welsh for small) spent the majority of his productive career in Essex, part of the historic region of Britain called East Anglia. The marshy stretches near the North Sea had once been underwater but, like the Netherlands, thousands of acres have been drained and reclaimed during the Middle Ages. This watercolor of Bentley Common is near present-day Colchester, where rising sea levels may take back broad low-lying landscapes such as this.