Audio description: 
Spring Morning by Samuel John ÔLamornaÕ Birch
Penlee House Gallery & Museum

The painting in front of you is Spring Morning by Samuel John ÔLamornaÕ Birch dating from 1904.  ItÕs a small, oil-on-wooden-panel painting measuring 29cm high by 27cm wide or 11 inches high by 10 inches wide.  It shows a rural Cornish landscape: a large expanse of blue sky and clouds above green fields.  The subject is the Trevider Valley near Lamorna, which was an area that Birch often visited with his family on picnics.  

The landscape shows a quiet, calm, sun-lit setting.  It is dominated by the sky, which takes up the top two thirds of the painting and is predominantly light blue, with white fluffy clouds painted within the blueness.  

The view looks across a green field towards a low hill on top of which there are some farm buildings; a rooftop is clearly visible alongside other solid shapes, presumably other buildings, painted in grey, cream and yellow.  The hill itself is painted across the width of the landscape; Birch has used small brush strokes in yellow and green to give the impression of gorse bushes and small trees. 

In the foreground on the left there are two brown and white cows grazing on a verdant green field.  An indistinct path, painted in a narrow, pale-coloured line across the green of the field, leads diagonally from the lower-left corner towards the middle of the painting.  The path is part of what is still known as the ÔMilk WayÕ, a route once used by farmers going to the Lamorna milk factory, now the site of the Lamorna Pottery.  

On the left of the painting, beyond the field and hill in the foreground, there are more green fields which recede into the distance.

Birch has created a sense of stillness in the painting.  It is a peaceful country view across farmland.  

END OF AUDIO DESCRIPTION