Walking through the walled garden of the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock you reach a shaded room in the Brewhouse — an ideal place to hold an exhibition of watercolours by this contemplative poet and artist.

He read classics at Pembroke College, was a member of the Oxford Arts Society where he exhibited in the company of his friend Shuffrey. In 1900, aged 17, he bemoaned the alterations being made to his home town of Abingdon where “everywhere workmen are busy dragging down oak-beamed and gabled dwellings, the relics of a purer age, to make room for erections that shame the face of day”.

Couldrey catches a quiet moment in the ordinary lives of the people around him. His Old Bathing Island, Abingdon (above) is reminiscent of the innocent style, pleasing composition and soft colours of the children’s artist Mabel Lucie Attwell. In a more sombre mood an older person and a youngster are standing in an otherwise empty street in Long Alley Almshouses.

There is even a peaceful quality to the detailed busy Cattle Market with its bustling folk going about their business as somebody displays a fat piglet to a possible buyer and another man leads in a horse and open carriage. In Folly Bridge a stream of punts, graced by ladies holding pretty parasols, comes towards us while pleasure seekers stroll along the towpath beside the Thames.

His misty evocations of Hastings are more subdued and quite different to the paintings he did during his years teaching abroad. In his Fishing Scene in India the light bounces off the waves while Women Gathering Reeds in India is painted with a simplicity and a directness made famous by Stanley Spencer and the people of Cookham.

Couldrey published an illustrated record of his travels in India which does not form part of this exhibition. It is interesting to note that his collection of South Indian bronzes is now in the Ashmolean. An eccentric, he ran barefoot in the park and played a soundless piano when he lost his hearing. Painting between 1937 and 1941, he made no reference to the war but instead left a moving record of the old market town of Abingdon.

Until October 17. Tuesday to Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday, 2-5pm