Walter Elmer Schofield, Phillack Bridge

This canvas depicts the hamlet of Undercliff, Phillack, at the head of the Hayle estuary in western Cornwall, a region of the United Kingdom where Schofield frequently traveled.

When asked how the experience of serving in the first World War affected Schofield’s outlook on life, the artist’s niece Margaret Phillips turned to this painting as an example of the type of subject that appealed to him in the years after the war. She described the ancient hamlet of structures and their dreamlike reflections in the rippling water as the embodiment of a nostalgic yearning for a better world, unbesmirched by modern man.