John Byam Liston Shaw

The Regatta

Sir William Blake Richmond KCB, RA, PPRBSA 1842 - 1921 The Shepherd Egg tempera on wooden panel, signed with initials bottom left Image size: 8 ¼ x 5 ½ inches Period gilt oak frame A newly discovered work by the artist. Sir William Blake Richmond KCB, RA, PPRBSA was an English portrait painter, sculptor and a designer of stained glass and mosaic. He is best known for his portrait work and decorative mosaics in St Paul's Cathedral in London. He was the son of the portraitist George Richmond RA and studied at the Royal Academy Schools in the early 1860s. Influenced by his father and by Sir John Everett Millais, he is best known for his mosaic decorations below the dome and in the apse of St Paul's Cathedral in London. His father, George Richmond, was one of 'the Ancients' who were a group of artists who formed around the visionary artist and poet William Blake. Samuel Palmer was an other of the ancients and a close friend of the family. Our painting could have been inspired by George Richmond’s engraving 'The Shepherd', 1827, but in our panel the shepherd is turned round facing away, and is playing a flute instead of resting on a staff. But the sheep and other elements are there. It is also suggestive of Welby Sherman's engraving after Samuel Palmer of the same name and date, but here the shepherd is sitting but like ours turned away. William Blake's is an altogether happier image given the figure is playing to his sheep. Our painting is playing with some of the same ideas and feels like the same sort of period, and the ‘fresco’ like chalk ground is interesting, as is the pen and ink finishing on the tempera. All three are strongly influenced by Blake's illustrations to Thornton's 'Virgil'. The shepherd and his flock are clearly based on Thenot and his sheep in the Frontispiece to Thornton. Blake Richmond wrote:"If there be the least value in my pictures, it is due to such lovely early impressions derived from the sweet poetic work of many of my father's contemporaries, Calvert, Blake and others, whose shadows are substance still to me" [Sir William Blake Richmond, letter to his father, 50 years after the death of William Blake, from Stirling op. cit p. 28]. Richmond was given private art lessons by John Ruskin before attending the Royal Academy for three years. After that he spent a number of years in Italy, where an encounter with a shepherd called Beppino, 'a splendid speciman of a Sabine Shepherd', could also have gave him the inspiration for the painting we show here. Richmond recalls how he met Beppino on the hillside, and was invited to share the shade of the shepherd's capanna, a wooden hut. 'What a place! In an instant of time I was back into the age of kings, and I knew Romulus had lived and am sure that he lived in a hut exactly like this one'. That night Richmond dined at Beppino's hut 'on roast kid, hard bread dipped in Roman wine, goat's cream and white ricotta'. The shepherd had such an impression on Richmond that he sought him out on a return visit to Italy some years later, but was saddened to hear that Beppino 'had joined his fore-fathers in the shades'. He was moved to write the following, which perfectly expresses the mood of this painting and his tribute to a fleeting companion: 'Little events of this kind unite past times with present, create and emphasis continuity of human instincts, which seem to defy time and make travel so intensely interesting and invigorating to a citizen of this world. One need not go to the palace, far otherwise, or to cities and towns to discover the kernal of enduring civilisations. One finds it, if one wills to do so, in the backbone of the world, an ancient peasantry who have watched and still watch the progress of the stars'. Richmond was influential in the early stages of the Arts and Crafts Movement in his selection of bold colours and materials for the mosaics in St. Paul's Cathedral and in his collaboration with James Powell and Sons...

Norman Lloyd Australian 1897 - 1985 Summer on the Seine Oil on canvas, signed lower right Image size: 30 x 38 inches Hand made frame Norman Lloyd was born in 1895 near Newcastle, New South Wales, where he attended school. He left school in 1911 and started to work and study painting with Julian Ashton and James R. Jackson in Sydney. On his 21st birthday in 1916 he enlisted with the Australian Imperial Forces. He was transported to Europe where he was seriously wounded in battle a year later. After returning to Sydney in February 1918, he took up painting lessons at the Julian Ashton Art School again. From 1921 to 1926, Lloyd exhibited with galleries in Sydney and Melbourne, showing landscapes and Sydney harbour scenes painted in the more traditional style of his teachers. From 1926 to 1929, Norman Lloyd visited Europe and travelled widely in Italy and France, exhibiting in the UK, France and Australia, culminating in a solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. In the 1930s, Lloyd migrated to London with his wife Edith for good, setting up a boarding house in upmarket St Johns Wood and establishing himself quickly in the new society, being a kind, generous and interested man with a broad horizon. His mansion became a meeting point and home for many Australian expats, among them painters Will...

Oil on canvas, signed lower right Image size: 33 1/2 x 56 1/2 inches (85 x 143 cm) Original gilt frame Provenance With the artist's son, Millie Dow Stott Esq., until 1912. Artist's Studio Sale, Christies, November 1913. Private Collection Exhibitions London, Royal Academy, 1895, no. 679. Paris, Societe de la Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1896, no. 1179. Berlin, VII Internationale Kunstausstellung 1897. no. 3533. Manchester, City of Manchester Art Gallery, 1912, no. 339. In the 1890s William Stott exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, mainly highly decorative works with subjects derived from classical mythology and literature. This painting was Stott's 1895 entry to the Royal Academy and was subsequently exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1896 and then on to the Berlin, VII Internationale Kunstausstellung 1897. Shakespeare was a favourite source for Victorian painters, and the tragic romance of Ophelia, from Hamlet, was an especially popular subject, featuring regularly in the Royal Academy exhibitions. The most popular and iconic image of Ophelia's death was, and is to this day, John Everett Millais's 1851 painting showing the confused and tragic Ophelia floating downstream on her back in a state of mad ecstasy, arms raised in a gesture of inevitable submission. However, although Stott chose not to pastiche this image, it seems highly likely that he was prompted to take up this subject, which had almost become a 'rite of passage' among Victorian painters, by the fact that in 1894 Millais's Ophelia was presented to the National Gallery of British Art by Sir Henry Tate. It appears that Stott was much influenced by John William Waterhouse...

Oil on canvas, monogrammed lower left and inscribed on reverse Image size: 20 x 24 inches (51 x 61 cm) Original gilt frame Provenance Mrs. Georgina Gale (Artists Widow) Bristol, Bristol Art Gallery, A collection of paintings by William Gale, January 1914, no. 12 Private collection William Gale exhibited a number of charming genre scene's in the Pre-Raphaelite style, of which the present is an exquisite example. This work has a strong nautical theme as suggested by the title. Through the small window at the back of this interior room we glimpse the sea, seemingly calm and peaceful. Despite its appearance, the threat of sea is reminded to us with the poster over the bed inscribed with the phrase 'Man Overboard'. This is cleverly echoed by the toy sail boat that lies at an angle, tipped to one side on the bedcovers. As we examine this image of boy and mother one can also identify a picture mounted on the wall of a man in a sailors uniform...

Unsigned. Presented in a wooden frame. Bought from auction with Christie's provenance attached to the back of one of the frames. On board.

Medium: Gouache and Ink on Paper Signature: Signed, Dated and Inscriber Lower Right

Original magazine cover illustration for Good Housekeeping, published August 1906. The illustration features a young woman in pink sitting in a rowboat Artwork Dimensions: 22.5" x 2...

This lovely British Edwardian portrait oil painting is by noted artist William Henry Margetson. He was known for his aesthetic full-length portraits of women, often in hats, in an in...