St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall

Thomas Creswick, 1811–1869

ca. 1838

Oil on panel

Yale Center for British Art

St. Michael’s Mount is a small island off the coast of Cornwall crowned by a church and castle. This jewel-like painting captures the castle’s romantic setting, where twice a day, the tide recedes to allow access to the island via a cobblestone causeway. In legend, the archangel Michael guards England from a stone seat atop the mount; John Milton embraced that imagery in his famous poem from 1637, “Lycidas.” The artist, Thomas Creswick, was a member of the Birmingham School of landscape artists, which distinguished itself by a fascination with minute and accurate depictions of nature. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collect