A Country Scene with Pond

A Country Scene with Pond, dated to around 1901 and now in the National Gallery of Ireland, shows Steer working in the English landscape tradition of the mature middle period, when he had moved from the Normandy-coast beach scenes of his radical Impressionist phase toward a more settled, Constable-influenced approach to the British countryside. The pond motif connected him directly to Constable's Wivenhoe Park and Flatford Mill tradition, in which the still reflective surface of standing water served as a device for doubling the sky and introducing sky colour into the lower portion of the composition. Steer's membership in the New English Art Club placed him at the centre of British Impressionism, and his country scenes of this period represent a domestication of French Impressionist colour sensibility within the longer tradition of English pastoral. The Dublin holding reflects the collecting habits of the National Gallery of Ireland, which built a substantial collection of British Victorian and Edwardian works.

Pond reflection required Steer to paint the sky twice: once directly, and once in its reflected version in the water surface, with the reflected image slightly darkened and the reflections of clouds blurred by any surface movement. His water surfaces at this period typically combine horizontal strokes for the ripple plane with vertical reflections, creating a weave of directions that reads as convincingly aqueous.