An Old Bridge at Hendon, Middlesex - Frederick Waters Watts (1828)

Middlesex Frederick

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

An Old Bridge at Hendon, Middlesex is an oil on canvas painting by the British landscape painter Frederick Waters Watts, dated to circa 1828. The work depicts a rustic stone bridge spanning a quiet stream in the then-rural village of Hendon, north of London, with small animated figures — passersby on the bridge, a figure wading in the stream, and a dog at the water's edge — lending the scene gentle human presence. Watts was a close follower of John Constable, and the painting reflects the Constable school's interest in naturalistic English landscape rendered with careful attention to light, atmosphere, and vernacular architectural detail. The site of Hendon was well known to painters of the period; a drawing by Constable of the very same bridge, inscribed "Hendon 8 Oct. 1820," survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.