Myles Birket Foster ‘stands as one of England’s most popular landscape draughtsmen and as a painter in water-colour of great distinction’ the Dalziel Brothers recalled after the artist’s death; while the Daily Graphic, on 26 December 1906, noted ‘Birket Foster produced something new - he was a tête d’école…never approached by any of his followers or rivals’.
Typical of Birket Foster's highly finished, tightly detailed rural scenes, this bucolic watercolour depicts a group of children crossing a ford in a horse and cart, while a young lady and her dog cross the wooden bridge beside them. Birket Foster had moved to Witley, Surrey in the early 1860s, drawn in by the simple and idyllic way of life. His work there focused on the Surrey landscape, and was populated by a range of animals and local characters. The motif of the horse and cart crossing a ford appears frequently, in different iterations.