Mallyan Spout, Goathland

It reflects the project’s focus on rural and picturesque locations in England, excluding Northern Ireland and covering only a limited number of Welsh counties.

John Cooper’s 1940 watercolour depicts the Mallyan Spout waterfall in Goathland, North Yorkshire, as part of the Recording Britain project, a wartime initiative to document Britain’s landscapes and heritage. The work was commissioned by the Committee for the Employment of Artists in Wartime, funded by the Pilgrim Trust and directed by Sir Kenneth Clark to preserve scenes threatened by war and modernization. It reflects the project’s focus on rural and picturesque locations in England, excluding Northern Ireland and covering only a limited number of Welsh counties. The painting is signed and held within the Recording Britain collection, which produced over 1,500 works by 97 artists between 1940 and 1943.