Victorian

Lucien Davis

1860-1941

Still Waters

Watercolour and gouache, signed lower right

Image size:  35½ inches in diameter

Original giltwood frame

Shown at the Royal Academy in 1901

James Webb
1825 - 1895
Littlehampton, Sussex
Oil on board, signed lower left
Image size: 8 x 12 inches
Contemporary silver gilt frame

This painting has on the verso written by the artist that it was painted on the spot in September 1882.

James Webb was born and lived all his life in Chelsea, London. He was a landscape painter specialising in coastal and port scenes.

Webb painted scenes in England, Wales, Holland, France and along the Rhine. He painted figures and buildings with as much competence as he did landscape backgrounds, and his paintings have a feeling of tranquility and harmony to them. Webb used pale colours, but painted in a robust naturalistic style. He was influenced by J. M. W. Turner.

James Webb came from a very artistic family. His father, Archibald Webb, was also a landscape painter who painted a very famous picture of the Battle of Trafalgar. His brother, Byron Webb, was a London painter of animals who specialised in Highland deer, horse portraits and hunting and skating scenes.

Webb exhibited in London from 1850 to 1888, he had works at the Royal Academy (29), the Royal Society of Artists Gallery at Suffolk Street, The British Institute, The New Watercolour Society and The Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

His works are represented in The Tate, The Victoria and Albert Museum and nearly all the important provincial museums in England.

Edwin Frederick Holt

1830 - 1912

By the Fireside

Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1877 bottom left and verso

Image size: 9 ½ x 13 ½ inches

Contemporary style frame

Holt was born in 1830 in Hampstead, but spent most of his life in Dunstable. 

Edwin began his artistic career by studying at the Royal Academy of Art where he went on to win a Silver medal for his work at the age of twentyfour. . From this point on, his work continued to get recognised and many of his pieces were entered into exhibitions. In total, Edwin Frederick Holt exhibited seven paintings at the Royal Academy, twelve at the British Institution and forty at the Royal Society of Arts. 

Thomas Cooper Gotch
1854 – 1931
Study of the Violinist for Holy Motherhood

Oil on canvas, on board

Image size: 28 ¾ x 21 inches

18th century frame

Provenance
Mrs Deidre MacLellan, the artist's grand-daughter

Literature
The Golden Dream by Pamela Lomax, P.120 and 123. See cat No. c65

Holy Motherhood is one of a number of compositions by Gotch that were painted throughout the 1890s and 1900s in the new style that the artist adopted following a visit to Italy in 1891-2.

Compositions by Gotch post-1892 generally take as their focus the themes of motherhood and child development. Other examples of such work by him include, The Child Enthroned (1894), The Heir to All the Ages (1897), A Pageant of Childhood (1899, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and Alleluia (1902, Tate).

These works, which share a common hieratic style and draw also on the symbolism of religious ritual, caused the artist to be linked with a contemporary revival of interest in English Pre-Raphaelitism.

The finished painting is on permanent display at the Laing Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Thomas Cooper Gotch
1854 – 1931
Study for The Child in the World
Oil on board, initialled lower right

Image size: 10 x 7¾ inches

Contemporary handmade frame

Literature
The Golden Dream by Pamela Lomax, P. 108

 Provenance
Mrs Deidre MacLellan, the artist's grand-daughter

Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854-1931) was an original member of the Newlyn colony of artists, the group that made such an impact on the late Victorian art world in England. He was a close and life-long friend of Henry Scott Tuke and Stanhope Forbes. From the mid 1880s, he was a leading figure amongst the young artists who attempted to resist the hegemony of London’s Royal Academy of Art, being a founder member and secretary of the New English Art Club.

After a trip to Florence in 1891, where he saw the paintings of Quattrocento artists such as Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, Gotch's style changed quite dramatically. He abandoned the realism and monochromatic blues and greys of the Newlyn School for highly decorative allegorical subjects, vibrant colours and an attention to detail akin to that of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Gotch was working on 'The Child in the World' in 1895 and different versions exist in oil, pencil and water-colour.  It portrays his daughter, Phyllis, encircled by a huge dragon.  The powerful hues of the dragon's body contrast strongly with the innocence of the blue-eyed child, clad in a simple cream coloured gown. The subject is a representation of innocence and experience.  Gotch explained it as the child "standing alone and unafraid in the innermost, horridest home of the Dragon, called the World, who is powerless against her innocence".

The oil version was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1895, being judged too radical for the Royal Academy. It received mixed reviews, for some critics thought the dragon more suited to pantomime than fear-inspiring. This irked Gotch who had spent a substantial amount of time researching the dragon in books on heraldry.

Thomas Cooper Gotch
1854 – 1931
Study for The Child Enthroned
Oil on canvas
Image size: 13¾ x 9½ inches

Contemporary handmade frame

Literature
The Golden Dream by Pamela Lomax, P. 17

Provenance
Mrs Deidre MacLellan, the artist's grand-daughter

Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854-1931) was an original member of the Newlyn colony of artists, the group that made such an impact on the late Victorian art world in England. He was a close and life-long friend of Henry Scott Tuke and Stanhope Forbes. From the mid 1880s, he was a leading figure amongst the young artists who attempted to resist the hegemony of London’s Royal Academy of Art, being a founder member and secretary of the New English Art Club.

After a trip to Florence in 1891, where he saw the paintings of Quattrocento artists such as Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, Gotch's style changed quite dramatically. He abandoned the realism and monochromatic blues and greys of the Newlyn School for highly decorative allegorical subjects, vibrant colours and an attention to detail akin to that of the Pre-Raphaelites.

This work is a preliminary sketch for what many regarded to be Gotch's master work, 'The Child Enthroned'.  The model is his daughter Phyllis, said by Gotch to be 'treated freely as a Madonna', and inspired by his travels in Italy. 

Ernest Arthur Rowe
1863 – 1922
Cypresses, Villa D’Este, Tivoli
Watercolour, signed and dated 1912
Image size: 21 x 14 inches
Original frame

Exhibited at The Fine Arts Society

Benjamin Williams Leader

1831-1923

Llugwy At Capel Curig, Wales

Oil on Canvas, signed & dated 1864

Image size: 13 ¾ x 17 ½ inches

Framed


Benjamin Williams Leader was born in Worcester to Sarah Whiting and Edward Leader Williams, who was a civil engineer. His father was a keen amateur artist - a friend of the artist John Constable. His brother was also Edward Leader Williams, the civil engineer who designed the Manchester Ship canal.

Benjamin went to the Worcester Royal Grammar School and then worked as a draughtsman in his father’s office while studying at the Worcester School of Design in the evenings. At 23 he went to the Royal Academy schools in London and had a picture accepted for exhibition. He went on to exhibit in the summer exhibition every year until he was 91. 

The Worcestershire countryside served as his early inspiration;  the picturesque villages and churches, the fields and rivers. His work proved very popular and he sold successfully. As mentioned, he was a regular exhibitor at the RA.  In 1859 he exhibited  'A Quiet Pool in Glen Falloch', following a trip to Scotland, which was bought by Agnew's. 

He changed his name to Benjamin Williams Leader in 1857 to distinguish himself from other artists named Williams. He married Mary Eastlake, a fellow artist, in 1876 and they had six children. In 1889 the family moved to a Norman Shaw designed house in Surrey where Benjamin died in 1923.

The fine detail in Leader’s early work is thought to be influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites but later on his style became looser and more impressionistic. He was made an associate of the Royal Academy in 1883 and became a Royal Academician in 1898. His paintings are exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Gallery, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and in Worcester which holds the largest collection.

British School
19th Century
Mischief

Oil on canvas

Image size: 30 x 25 inches

Signed and inscribed indistinctly

Thomas Cooper Gotch RBA RI
1854 - 1931
Death the Bride

Graphite on paper

Image size: 44 x 34 inches

Hand made gilt frame

The title of the  painting comes from Shakespeare. It is from Measure for Measure, Act III, scene I, line 86, where Claudio says:

'If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride and hug it in my arms.'

Gotch uses poppies here to show death personified as a beautiful, morbid bride ready to embrace the viewer for eternity.

Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854-1931) was an original member of the Newlyn colony of artists, the group that made such an impact on the late Victorian art world in England. He was a close and life-long friend of Henry Scott Tuke and Stanhope Forbes. From the mid 1880s, he was a leading figure amongst the young artists who attempted to resist the hegemony of London’s Royal Academy of Art, being a founder member and secretary of the New English Art Club.

After a trip to Florence in 1891, where he saw the paintings of Quattrocento artists such as Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, Gotch's style changed quite dramatically. He abandoned the realism and monochromatic blues and greys of the Newlyn School for highly decorative allegorical subjects, vibrant colours and an attention to detail akin to that of the Pre-Raphaelites.

This work is a preliminary sketch for what many regarded to be Gotch's master work, 'Death the Bride'.

Edward Robert King
1862 - 1951
Leaving South Harting Church
Oil on canvas, signed & dated 1888
Image size: 23 x 17 inches
Original gilt frame

Edward R. King was a portrait, figure and landscape painter, the son of William Bignell King and Agnes Jane King, née Maybury. He was the brother of the painter, etcher and illustrator William Gunning King (1859-1940) and they shared an address at South Harting, near Petersfield, Hampshire.

His sympathetic treatment of gritty rural and urban subjects was admired by Vincent van Gogh. In 1888 he was elected a member of the New English Art Club in 1888, the year JW exhibited with the group.In 1889 King was amongst those proposed guests to a dinner organised by W. C. Symons to congratulate JW on becoming an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Munich, a dinner which was to be held at the Criterion in Piccadilly on 1 May.

However in 1925 he was committed to St James’ Hospital in Milton,  Portsmouth, after suffering a breakdown following his wife’s death from consumption.  although he continued to paint. 

King absorbed himself in his art whilst in hospital and encouraged by staff, who recognised the importance of his art to his recovery, he became a familiar sight around the hospital farm and the waterfront at Milton Locks. He created a huge number of works during this time, and after the 1941 Blitz bombings was commissioned by the Mayor of Portsmouth to document its devastating aftermath. Now he could be seen sat painting amongst the rubble, hiding unfinished pieces within the wreckages to return to later.