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.