Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are delighted to offer for sale a wonderful, large, avian watercolour by that master of bird paintings Charles Walter Simpson, who has signed the painting in the lower left hand corner and dated it 1912, as shown. The painting depicts two clusters of gulls, one standing on a rock in the foreground, while another is coming in to land, and a cluster of five gulls around another rock further back.

Charles Walter Simpson was a bird, marine, landscape and animal painter and illustrator, though it is his bird paintings, particularly those of gulls that are most renowned.

Charles Walter Simpson was born on the 8th May, 1885, in Camberley, Surrey, the sone of Major-General C. R. Simpson CB. Due to a riding accident in his youth, he was unable to follow his father into a career in the military, so, as he had been keen on drawing during his education, he decided to become an artist. A.though largely self taught, he did study under Lucy Kemp Welch at Bushey and for a short period at the Academie Julian in Paris.

He arrived in Newlyn in 1906, where he met Ruth Alison, who was a student at the Forbes School and he married her in 1913. They established the St. Ives School of Art togther, where Ruth taught portraiture. Charles painted countrysides and lalrge seascapes with gulls, iin both oil and watercolour.

In 1914, he was elected a Member of the Royal Society of British Artists and, in the same year, a Member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour. A Membership of the Royal Oil Painters Institute followed in 1923. He was also a Member of the St. Ives School of Artists.

In 1924, Charles and Ruth moved back to London, and, in 1927, he exhibited pictures from his animal studies at London Zoo. However, in 1931, the family, Charles, Ruth & their daughter Leonora (1914-2003, were back in Cornwall, and, in the 1939 Register, were living at Duncans, Lamorna. Charles Walter Simpson died in the Penzance area on the 3rd October 1971.

There was a 2 month retrospective exhibition of Charles' work at Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penznace in the autumn of 2005. There are 28 of his paintings in the National Collection and may be viewed at artUK.org.

He exhibited 40 works at the Royal Academy, 110 at the Royal Institute, 34 at the RBA, 26 at the RHA, 12 at the Walker AG in Liverpool, 50 at the Alpine Club Gallery, 317 at The Fine Art Society, and 46 at the Baillie Gallery, He also exhibited at the Paris Salon and the Irish Salon, where his bird paintings were well received.

The watercolour has been newly double mounted in two-tone acid-ree mountboard and is newly framed in a 1 3/4 inch silver and beige frame to suit. It will be supplied with new brass hangers, new brass picture wire and will be ready tohang.

Image size: 23 x 19 inches - 58.45cm x 48.25cm

Frame size: 33 1/8 x 29 5/8 inches - 84.15cm x 75.25cm

Medium: Watercolours on paper

Condition: Very good. There is no foxing. The mounts and frame are new.