Tree Study

Many of Churchyard’s drawings depict the landscape he passed through while traveling around Suffolk as a country lawyer. They are typically done on small sheets of paper that one can imagine him stuffing into a pocket on his way out the door. The impulse to sketch directly from nature likely reflects the influence of Churchyard’s neighbor and near contemporary, John Constable. However, unlike Constable’s work, in which nature is used to express sentiment, Churchyard’s drawings are simple records, swiftly captured, of something that briefly caught his eye. This example, entirely drawn with the brush, has a calligraphic quality that reflects the artist’s spontaneous response to what he saw (2022).