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The Old Mill, Ambleside Two buildings dominate this verticalcomposition. The building on the left is the larger of the two structures. It diagonally faces the viewer, bathed in light. Attached to the structure is an active watermill. A wooden bridge directly above the watermill visually and physically connects both structures. The structure on the right faces the viewer head on. The lower buildings are shadowed beneath the structure. The stream flows through the center of the composition, in between the structures. The stream and waterfall appear to originate in the mountain directly behind the structures. Rocks, moss, and vegetation dominate the foreground. The mountain and lofty clouds serve as a backdrop for the composition. The textured natural surface serves as a contrast for the rough-hewn stone buildings. Background J.M.W. Turner visited the Lake District in a northern England tour in 1797, creating many sketches of the local scenery. Trained as a topographical draftsman, Turner focused on the perspective and elevations of these two working mills, fascinated by the harnessed power of the stream. The technology of the working mills (a human invention, therefore the power of man) is contrasted with the power of nature (the stream and the mountain, therefore a higher spiritual power). Turner's view illustrates Braithwaite's Corn (wheat) mill on the left and the old Bark Mill on the opposite bank. The Stock Gill Beck (stream) flows through to the foreground, and the slope of Wanstall forms the backdrop. Both natural elements surround the man made mill structures. Although as a 'picturesque' scene according to the rational tenets of Gilpin (looking for qualities in the landscape "capable of being illustrated in a painting"), The Old Mill, Ambleside also embodies aspects of Burke's 'sublime and beautiful' theories. Arousal of a viewer's emotions, while elevating their mind, was paramount in the portrayal of landscape imagery, as evidenced in the waterfall at Ambleside. it was almost impossible for the steadiest eye to look upon this waterfall w/o giddiness below the bridge is a Mill and also an old summer house with other old buildings, ivied trunks of trees and mossy stones which have furnished subjects for many a picture Two things essential [to the cloth industry] are found here…I mean coals and running water upon the tops of the highest hills…after we had mounted the third hill, we found one continued village…hardly a house standing out of speaking distance from another…We could see that at almost every house there was a tenter for stretching cloth and almost on every tenter a piece of cloth…yet look which way we would – high to the tops, and low to the bottoms – it was all the same; innumerable houses and tenters, and a white piece upon every tenter…At every considerable house was a Manufactory or Work-house…and the little streams were so…guided by gutters or pipes…that none of those houses were without a river…running into and through their work houses. |