(Hiker in Wooded Landscape)

 

William Gunning King

  1859 - 1940 (biography)

c. 1920  

etching 

7 5/8 x 5 7/8" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

not stated 

 

 

antique-white laid 

proof 

artist 

4261 

SOLD

This impression is from the collection of Danish critic and author Georg Bröchner, who wrote for the British art magazine "The Studio" in the early 20th century.

A lone figure, walking stick in hand, walks along a ridge top that opens onto a gently sloping landscape, framed between towering elms whose branches are caught in a soft breeze. King captures a peacefully solitary moment that is just anonymous enough to allow the viewer to imagine themselves a part of it.

The word “hiking” is not used so much as “walking” in the United Kingdom, where laws regarding the traversing of rural property are more flexible than in the United States. Terms for this kind of journeying are “hillwalking” for mountainous terrain and “fellwalking” for Lake Districts - “fell” referring to high, uncultivated land.