Charles James Adams

Tree Roots

Watercolour on paper, signed and dated '1912' bottom right Image size: 21 x 14 inches (53.25 x 35.5 cm) Original frame Exhibitions The Fine Arts Society Ernest Arthur Rowe Rowe was a watercolourist specialising in garden scenes. He spent his career responding to the Victorian love of formal gardens with his meticulous paintings of the grounds of the country’s finest historic houses. Ernest Arthur Rowe was born in West Ham, which was then in Essex. He trained first as a lithographer and, in 1884, began studying at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours where he won a President’s Medal in 1885. Initially, Rowe painted landscapes in general, but by the 1890s he was specialising in gardens. During that decade, he joined the London Sketch...

Watercolour on paper, signed bottom right Image size: 8 x 10 1/4 inches (20.25 x 26 cm) Mounted and framed Charles Rebel Stanton served with the First Surrey Rifles in Northern France and Belgium during the First World War. Although Stanton was not an official war artist, his stirring watercolours document the devastation of towns and villages that he visited while on active military service The Artist Charles Rebel Stanton was born in Kentish Town, London, on 3 February 1887, the third of seven children of the book seller’s assistant, Charles Stanton, and his wife, Amelia (née Tate). At the time of the 1891 Census, the family was living at 22 Corinne Road, Islington. Nothing is known of Stanton’s education but, at the time of the 1901 Census, when he was 14 years old, he was working as a Science Assistant for the School Board of London, probably at a local school. By then, he and his family had moved to 121 South Street, Greenwich, and his father was working as a carpenter. In The Art of the RMS Queen Mary (1994), Douglas M Hinkey describes Stanton as ‘a painter trained as an architect’. While nothing is known of his architectural training, he is described as an ‘artist’ in the 1911 Census, which also records that he was still living with his family, which had moved to 53 Grosvenor Park SE, St Mary Newington. In the previous year, he had won second prize in the class for ‘pictorial art’ in a competition organised by the magazine, The Studio. Charles Stanton began his career as a commercial artist, designing posters and postcards and illustrating books, and signing his work ‘Charles R Stanton’. Commissions included a poster for the Fine Art Society that was general enough in its design to have been used to advertise any number of exhibitions (though the example that has come to light promoted ‘Water Colours of Flower Time...