Lincolnshire Farm

This is a view across Poolthorne Farm at Cadney near Brigg in North Lincolnshire. It was the farm of Mrs Doris Ridley (née Hardy), who had admired the work of Richard Eurich and shared mutual friends with the family. The farm had been in the possession of the Hardy family since the 1920s, and the picture was commissioned just before the farm was sold in 1963.

As is often the case in Richard's landscapes and seascapes, the central subject ends up being quite small in the frame. On one level the painting is perhaps more about the weather than the view, the wind moving the clouds, sending shadows scudding across the landscape, creating eddies in the corn.

The picture represents an ambiguous record of a familiar landscape and of a farm in transition. The small Friesian herd, the contrast between unprofitable woodland and fields from which hedges are already being removed – the farm would not remain unchanged. It is part of a flat and featureless landscape, yet with its particular charms, dominated by a huge sky, at the mercy of the weather.