Cobblestone Christmas

You made this ancient stone bridge an artistic monument that I must revisit. When I issued Cobblestone Bridge some years ago, this celebration of life in the Hampshire region of England quickly became the best loved of all my village scenes.

As I considered subjects for a Christmas painting this year, my thoughts turned to the familiar charms of village life southwestern England, I decided to return to the scene of my former inspiration. Not, this time, on a ramble with Nanette through the snowy English fields, but simply through the powers of mind and imagination. I know this stately old bridge well enough to conjure it and its environs when it wears a mantle of white and bears the wreaths of Christmas.

Cobblestone Christmas features a bridge spanning a free-flowing brook, a church, a comfortable inn – all constructed with flat stones that abound in the fields. The thatched roofs, built up from bundles of reeds, are crowned with snow; many are also framed by strings of twinkling lights.

Light spills from the windows of every home and suffuses into the crisp winter air, where it mingles with the incandescent fires of the setting sun. God and man have truly collaborated in a celebration of the season.