William White Warren, 'The Crystal Palace from Penge', between 1854 and 1866

In this sketch, the British artist William White Warren has used confident and rapid brushstrokes to capture the monumental Crystal Palace. The soft afternoon light bathes the scene in golden warmth. In the foreground, the fields are divided into neat patches with varying shades of green. The artist’s short, quick strokes suggest grasses swaying in the breeze.

The Crystal Palace sits on a hill, its glass surfaces catching the sunlight. Dabs of white paint hint at the countless glass panes that made the building so revolutionary. The structure appears almost ethereal against the dramatic sky. Sweeping brushstrokes create clouds that seem to move across the blue expanse. Our eye is drawn from the earthy foreground through the middle distance of trees and hills up to the Palace itself. This mirrors the journey that visitors took as they approached this marvel of Victorian engineering.

The Crystal Palace was an innovative glass and steel structure designed by engineer Sir Joseph Paxton for the Great Exhibition in 1851. It was originally built in Hyde Park in West London. In 1854, after the exhibition, workers dismantled and moved it to South London near Sydenham. It continued to attract much attention. Artists often painted it, both inside and out. By showing the Palace from a distance, Warren was able to contrast the manmade structure with the green fields surrounding it and the blue sky with scudding clouds. Sadly, a fire in 1936 burnt the Crystal Palace to the ground.

Warren’s works are all small-scale sketches made swiftly in the open air. Many of them have a freshness and spontaneity that come from his attempts to capture fleeting changes of light.

Although little-known today, Warren enjoyed a successful career. He exhibited at the British Institution between 1865 and 1867. He visited Italy, particularly Venice, in 1869 and again from 1877 to 1878. He also produced sketches of France, Sardinia and Corsica. In November 1869 he had a solo show at the German Gallery in Bond Street, London. The following year the French dealer Paul Durand-Ruel hired the gallery to exhibit works by artists of the Barbizon School. These included Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, who also advocated painting open-air sketches in oils. Durand-Ruel would become the primary dealer for many Impressionists such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. Pissarro painted the Crystal Palace in 1871.

Warren also collected antiquities, decorative art and miniatures. These items were auctioned in 1886 at Christie’s in a four-day sale. The auction included Warren’s paintings, some of which sold for as much as 50 guineas, showing the popularity of his works.