The most poignant image in the newly-published volumes of the Boyce Papers is a photo of the landscape sketching paintbox that belonged to Joanna Boyce Wells when she died. It's pocket-sized for use in the field, and has tiny tubes of paint and several re-usable plywood panels about as big as a postcard, for plein-air sketching, especially of colour. Here two are visible - the one floating on the left, which has a view of a steep hillside presumably somewhere on the North Downs , and the other lying in the box, showing a tree rising from gorse or bushes. The panel with almost-abstract colour passages could represent an Impressionistic flower-filled garden, but as the inside lid of the paintbox it more probably carries various oils from brushes or miniature knife, laid out for use as on a palette. All come, as it were directly from Joanna's hand, just as she left them.
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