'A spacious horizon is an image of liberty': Artistic and literary representations of space and freedom in the English common field landscape in the face of Parliamentary Enclosure, 1810-1830

Capital & Class, Winter 2004 by Waites, Ian

If the general location and local historical circumstances contradict the notion of Lincolnshire landscape as a depiction of an unenclosed open field, the content and detail of DeWint's painting continue to suggest otherwise, albeit in a further, paradoxical manner. The painting is of an extensive vista without any of the noticeable, man-made boundaries that would have been produced by enclosure. The field in the foreground appears to be communally worked, and the labourers in it are seen in a variety of positions and activities: resting and eating, pitching and carting sheaves, raking loose corn into heaps, and gleaning.

It is the very presence of gleaners that, to some extent, reinforces the assertion that this particular painting must be a depiction of a commonly-farmed, open field. If this field were enclosed, the common right of gleaning would essentially be forbidden under the practices associated with private ownership. At the very most, this practice was allowed at the discretion of the new owner-farmer after enclosure.

The art historian Christiana Payne has noted the way in which the everyday social tensions that arose as a consequence of parliamentary enclosure might be signified within Lincolnshire landscape.,The heaps in the foreground may relate to the practice of raking the fields to collect up any loose corn in order to leave little behind for the gleaners. Payne surmises that the gleaners to the right are looking pointedly across to the raked heaps of corn, while themselves carrying the few meagre stalks that they have only just managed to find (Payne, 1991). The practice of raking up loose stalks was criticised by Charles Gray in his commentary to W. H. Pyne's Microcosm (1806), a collection of pen and watercolour vignettes of agricultural labourers. Here, Gray refers to the 'repulsive selfishness' of the newly-emergent, profit-minded farmer.

Given all this, I feel we can take Lincolnshire landscape to be a semi-imaginary representation of a common field landscape, devised by DeWint so that he could make a comment on the conflict between ancient common rights on one hand, and modern commercial practice on the other.

Despite the apparent historical complexities involved in establishing Lincolnshire landscape as a depiction of an open field, the painting can be considered to express a personal attitude on the part of the artist himself. Certainly, pace Harriet DeWint's memoir, both Lincolnshire landscape and View from the Holmes suggest a private aesthetic and psychological affinity with the common field landscape, and with the sense of space and freedom it offered. The key to DeWint's articulation of space and freedom in his common field landscapes lies in his evolved compositional and technical style, which is unusual for the time.

Lincolnshire Landscape is representative of the way in which DeWint first of all uses a long, narrow canvas to emphasise both the endless space of the almost-unbroken horizon of a common field and skyline, and the labourers working 'in common' within the field itself. That these labourers are working in an environment determined by the absolute lack of any restrictive, artificial boundaries across a commonly-farmed field is made doubly conspicuous by DeWint's deliberate use of broad, imprecise washes of colour.