Budding Elms in April, Mayfield

Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson 1847 - 1906

Summary

View of a group of blossoming elm trees in April, a grassy clearing with scattered flowers in foreground.

Display Label

Sarah P Ball Dodson 1847-1906 Budding Elms in April, Mayfield 1901 Oil on canvas Sarah Dodson studied at the Pennsylvania Academy before leaving for Paris where she became a Salon exhibitor from 1877 onwards. She moved to Brighton at the end of the century and continued to paint although suffering from a terminal illness. This once characteristic scene was painted at Mayfield, south of Tunbridge Wells in East Sussex. Her brother recorded that her landscape studies were mostly used for her figure compositions and completed within three to four hours in an Impressionistic manner. Elms were ancient, indigenous British trees dating back before the Ice Age. In the late nineteenth century they were a typical part of arable scenery but Dutch Elm Disease, which appeared in the early 1960s on infected rock elm logs needlessly imported from Canada, has since stripped the countryside of some ten million trees. R Ball Dodson gift 1920