Gathering Storm

John Linnell was mentored by the English landscape painter John Varley and although he was a versatile painter painting portraits and minatures as well as landscapes, it was the latter that he too eventually came to focus on. His early landscapes are very naturalistic representations for which he made use of a camera obscura. His later paintings such as this one are less focused, perhaps showing the influence of his son-in-law Samuel Palmer.   Linnell was a deeply religious man and he became a close friend and patron of William Blake.