George Fennel Robson

Overlooking the English Channel’s narrowest point, the towering

white-chalk headland known as Shakespeare’s Cliff lies just

twenty-one miles from the coast of France. The name stems

from its association with King Lear, in which the blind Earl of

Gloucester attempts suicide from “a cliff, whose high and bending

head looks fearfully in the confined deep.” Here we see Gloucester

in the lower right, the hunched old man in brown robes and a

red cap, accompanied by his son Edgar, who saves him from self-destruction.

Unlike most watercolor specialists, George Fennel

Robson worked primarily with historical and literary subjects,

often combining Shakespearian narratives with actual landscape

settings and using rich, saturated colors to further distinguish his

paintings from those of competitors.