English: Black Gang Chine, Isle of Wight, Peter De Wint (21/01/1784 -30/06/1849), about 1843, V&A Museum no. 1036-1886

Techniques: oil on canvas

Place: Black Gang Chine, England

Dimensions: Height 61 cm (estimate), Width 74 cm (estimate)

Black Gang Chine is now a tourist attraction on the Isle of Wight. The chines are deep and narrow ravines cut into soft rock by streams descending steeply to the sea. They are numerous in the sea-cliffs of the Isle of Wight and the coast of Hampshire, and were much-admired geological features in the early 19th century. The ever-crumbling, steep, and sometimes sheer sides of the ravines framed a sublime and gloomy scene of an apparent chaos of mud, trees, vegetation and broken rocks, slowly sliding into the sea. The continual movement of the fertile soil and debris watered by the action of the stream encouraged a restless and luxuriant vegetation, much denser than in a field or forest, which gave an exotic quality to this feature of the English landscape. De Wint was most famous as a watercolourist, but here he shows his mastery of oil painting.