W. G. Collingwood

William Gershom Collingwood (/ˈkɒlɪŋˌwʊd/; 6 August 1854[1] – 1 October 1932) was an English author, artist, antiquary and professor of Fine Arts at University College, Reading.

[4] His father, also William, was a watercolour artist, and had married Marie Elisabeth Imhoff of Arbon, Switzerland in 1851.

Ransome learned to sail in Collingwood's boat, Swallow, and became a firm friend of the family, even proposing marriage to both Dora and Barbara (on separate occasions).

Collingwood was particularly interested in Norse culture and the Norsemen, and he wrote a novel, Thorstein of the Mere which was a major influence on Arthur Ransome.

[5] He produced hundreds of sketches and watercolours during this time (e.g. an imagined meeting of the medieval Althing),[6] and published, with Stefánsson, an illustrated account of their expedition in 1899 under the title A Pilgrimage to the Saga-steads of Iceland.

In 1919, he returned to Coniston and continued his writing with a history of the Lake District and perhaps his most important work, Northumbrian Crosses of the pre-Norman Age.

The short verse at its base was penned by his close friend Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley who was chair of the memorial committee.

His diary for 1919–20, held in the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, contains brief allusions to other possible memorials; at Rockcliffe, Carlisle and an unknown bridge, probably in north Cumberland.

[9] The largest part of Collingwood's paintings of Iceland are held in the National Museum in Reykjavik:[6] other locations include Abbot Hall Art Gallery.