Signed and dated  l.l.: Kenneth Rowntree/42 and inscribed verso: The Abbey Ruins, Titly – 12 gns and further inscribed (crossed out) Tilty – the ruins – Tilty Abbey & the site of. The monastic fish ponds are in the foreground

Watercolour over pencil, 51 by 35 cm (20 by 13 ¾ ins)

Provenance: with J.Leger & Sons, London, February 1944

Exhibited: London, British Institute of Adult Education, English Watercolours, 1944

Recording Britain, the brainchild of Kenneth Clark was an ambitious project set up in the early 1940s – a Home Front Wartime art initiative intended to record the English landscape and aspects of vernacular architecture and culture at a time of imminent change and even possible destruction. Rowntree was one of the most prolific contributors to the scheme, creating watercolours of Essex (where he was living at the time), as well as Wales, Yorkshire and Derbyshire. He painted a number of views of the church and abbey ruins at Tilty for Recording Britain at the same date as the present work, of which one, View of the Ruins of the Cloister, the Belfry of St. Mary's Church, and the Vicarage, Tilty (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (acc.E.1418-1949)), shows the same ruins but taken from the right hand side looking in towards the village of Tilty itself.