About this artwork
Carse had received some teaching from David Allan, whom he followed in the illustration of Scottish rural life and folk custom. Some of his earlier pictures influenced the young David Wilkie. The story told by The New Web is a little obscure, and is full of disconnected incidents, typical of Carse's taste. The village tailor and a young lad admire the quality of the new bale of cloth (a ‘new web’) he is cutting. Nearby another a young man (possibly the tailor’s apprentice) embraces a girl, and a scalded child yells beside the large soup pot and her grandmother reaches to comfort her. There seems an implicit contrast between youth and age, so the tailor's ‘new web’ perhaps alludes to the up and coming generation.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Alexander Carse (about 1770 - 1843) Scottish
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title:The New Web
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date created:Exhibited 1813 (Associated Artists, Edinburgh)
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materials:Oil on canvas
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measurements:47.30 x 62.50 cm; Framed: 62.70 x 78.80 x 6.50 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Presented by John Ritchie Findlay 1886
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accession number:NG 780
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gallery:
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subject:
Alexander Carse
Alexander Carse
Carse was an assistant to David Allan before the artist's death in 1796, and undoubtedly received preliminary artistic training from him. Allan's influence on Carse's small, vivacious genre scenes is evident. In 1801, he attended the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh, but this training did not yield...