Victorian

Herbert Sidney Percy
1863-1903
The Poppy Garden
Oil on canvas, signed lower left
Image size: 19 ¾ x 15 ¾ inches
Original gilt frame

This painting depicts the artists daughter in the garden.

Herbert Sidney Percy was a member of the Williams family of painters who painted mainly portraits, but also produced some fine landscapes of the English countryside.

Percy was the youngest son of the popular Victorian landscape painter Sidney Richard Percy and Emily Fairlam, his father being a member of the Williams family of painters. He married Maud Thompson, who was the sister of the well-known Shakespearean actress Constance Crawley. His sister Amy Dora Percy became a novelist under the pen name of Mrs. Fred Reynolds.

Percy entered the Royal Academy of Art Schools in December 1881 at the age of 18, and spent two three-year terms there, earning two silver medals. Although he was a competent landscape artist, he considered himself primarily a portrait and miniature painter, as these brought in the large commissions, and his portraits hang in the homes of many prominent English families. He also painted some impressionist pieces, worked as a picture restorer, and prepared engravings, often from his own line drawings, for books and magazines.

He was a close friend of the writer G.K. Chesterton, and some of Chesterton's books are illustrated with Percy's engravings.He exhibited one painting at the Royal Academy, and eight works with the Society of British Artists.

He was also a frequent exhibitor with the Royal Society of Painters in Oil and Watercolours. His portrait of Captain James Wood hangs in the Royal Marines Museum in Portsmouth, Hampshire. His daughter Sidney Dolores Bunce became a noted California painter.

Briton Rivière RA
1840 - 1920

The Robin

Oil on board

Signed and dated 1876 lower left

Image size: 6 inches x 7 inches

Original gilt frame

Briton Rivière RA was born in London on 14^th August 1840, the son of William Rivière who was a drawing master at Cheltenham College and then an art teacher at the University of Oxford.  The family were of Huguenot descent. He exhibited a variety of paintings at the Royal Academy but devoted much of his life to animal paintings.

Briton was educated at Cheltenham College and Oxford, where he took his degree in 1867. For his art training he was indebted almost entirely to his father. His paternal uncle Henry Parsons Rivière (1811–1888) was also a noted watercolourist, exhibiting works at the Royal Watercolour Society, London and the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. His first pictures appeared at the British Institution, and in 1857 he exhibited three works at the Royal Academy, but it was not until 1863 that he became a regular contributor to the Academy exhibitions. Early in his career, Rivière made some mark as an illustrator, beginning with Punch magazine. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1878, and a Royal Academician in 1881, and received the degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford in 1891. He was narrowly defeated in the election for President of the Royal Academy in 1896. His wife, Mary Alice Rivière, whom he married in 1867, was also a painter and exhibited briefly at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1869–70.  After his death in London in 1920 she presented the British Museum with four of his drawings.

The artist and his wife had seven children; five sons and two daughters. One of the sons, Hugh Goldwin Rivière (1869–1956), became a portraitist.

William Henry Hunt

1790 - 1864

Bird's Nest

Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1820
Image size: 11½ x 8⅜ inches

William Henry Hunt was a painter and watercolourist of fruit and flowers, landscapes and rustic genre. Hunt’s works influenced many Victorian artists.

Hunt’s parents decided on an artistic career for him, due to a deformity in his legs, which made it difficult for him to walk.  He was apprenticed to John Varley in about 1804 and one of his fellow pupils was John Linnell. The two artists liked each other's work and went on sketching tours together, including one to Hastings in 1809.

In 1807 Hunt began to exhibit oils at the RA and in 1808 entered RA schools. By 1815 he had set up on his own as a rustic and architectural painter.

Hunt was elected to the ARWS in 1824 and the Old Watercolour Society in 1826. From about 1827 he began to paint fruit and flowers, and candlelight scenes.

Over the years his technique also changed, using body-colour he developed an individual method of hatching and stippling over a white ground, similar to that of Myles Birket Foster.


Hunt was sometimes referred to as Hedgerow Hunt or Birds Nest Hunt. 

Museums

Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum, Leeds City Art Gallery, Glasgow Art Gallery, Bushey Museum and Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Philadelphia Museum of Art.  LiteratureWitt, Sir John Clermont. William Henry Hunt (1790-1864), Life and Work: with a Catalogue. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1982.William Henry Hunt, 1790-1864. Wolverhampton: Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 1981.

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

Léon Augustin Lhermitte

French   1844 - 1925

The Haymakers

Pastel on Paper

Image size: 9 ½ x 12 ½ inches

Original swept frame

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.

William Cave Thomas
1820 – 1896
The Cool Stream
Oil on canvas

Image size: 17 ½ x 11 inches
Original frame

Thomas was a link, via his friend Ford Madox Brown with whom he shared a studio in 1848, between the Pre- Raphaelites and the monastic group of German painters known as the Nazarenes. Thomas studied in Munich in the early 1840s and adopted the Nazarenes’ severe style, hard outline and Christian subject matter. In 1845, three years before the Brotherhood was formed, Brown went to Munich to meet the two most important Nazarenes, Overbeck and Cornelius, probably at Thomas’ introduction. Thomas also knew Seddon and Rossetti, and was credited with giving the Pre-Raphaelite periodical The Germ its name.

In Munich in entered he worked under Hess on the frescoes in the Basilica. Two years later he returned to take part in the Westminster competitions, for which his training ideally equipped him and in which he twice won premiums. He exhibited at the Royal Academy (1843-62), the British Institution and elsewhere, concentrating on historical. literary and allegorical themes. Three papers by him on 'The Influences which tend to retard Progress of the Fine Arts' were published in the Builder in 1848, and a pamphlet, PreRaphaelitism tested by the Principles of Christianity: An Introduction to Chnman Idealism, appeared in 1860.

E. Bataille

1817 - 1882

Duck Hunting

Oil on canvas, signed bottom right and verso

Image size: 9½ x 12 inches

Original frame

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. 

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