A Little Black Barn in Suffolk

Leonard Russell Squirrell

This etching was published for the membership of the Printmakers Society of California for the year 1929 in an edition of 325.

Squirrell was an avid recorder of his surroundings and had a fondness for the countryside of his birth - Ipswich, England - and neighboring counties. Though he traveled frequently, including to the United States and throughout Europe, he claimed to prefer the idyllic flora and architecture of familiar villages.

In “Little Black Barn in Suffolk” we see his appreciation of the everyday, presenting a somewhat ramshackle barn under an early afternoon sun, two farmhands at a task in the lower right and the usual detritus of a working farm - bundles of hay, perhaps - piled neatly behind a fence in the lower left. There is nothing to suggest Squirrell wanted to alter the scene, preferring instead to simply appreciate the lives of those who made their beloved home what it was.