People loading corn on to a horse-drawn cart at harvest-time. Engraving by J. Cousen after J. Linnell.

"Were we desirous of showing to a foreigner, ignorant of both, what is the character of English rural scenery, and what is that of our school of landscape painters, we should introduce him to the pictures of John Linnell as best exhibiting the peculiar features of the one, while manifesting the highest qualities of the other. If Turner be regarded as the chief of the idealists, Linnell may be accepted as the head of the naturalists; and yet, strange to say, there are people so devoid of perception that they cannot estimate at their proper value either of those two great artists. The former had laid aside his pencil for over, and was gone to his rest, almost before the public had learned to appreciate him at his true worth; and it is only within the last few years, comparatively, that the works of the latter came to be understood and eagerly sought after: now they command any price he chooses to ask for them, and must always hold the foremost rank in the productions of our native school. Linnell's style is as original in its way as that of Turner; there is no artist, ancient or modern, with whom he can be compared, not one to whom we can point as his model; he is, as it were, his own master; he looks at nature with his own eyes, not with those of another, and represents her after his own fashion—one as true as it is beautiful. Simple as his subjects almost invariably are, he renders them grand by the boldness of his treatment, the vigour of his execution, and the richness of his colouring; in this latter quality his pictures are absolutely unrivalled."—Art journal, loc. cit.