Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are offering for sale this attractive and very well executed watercolour by the artist John Keeley RBSA, who has signed the painting in the lower right hand corner and entitled it Arthog. The artist entitled the watercolour verso 'Arthog, after a wet day'. The painting depicts an elderly man walking across a bridge over a stream. The road has stone walls on either side as well as along the bridge and continues past a cottage with smoke coming out of its chimney. It has been raining and the man is wearing a hat and coat and is carrying an umbrella on his right hand and a bundle in his left. As the leaves are still on the trees, but the cottage has a fire, it is probably autumn and the sky looks stormy.

Arthog is a village, post town and community in the Meirionnydd area in Gwynedd, North Wales including the villages of Fairbourne and Friog. It is located on the A493, approximately 8 miles (13 km) west of Dolgellau, and had a population of 1,010 in 2001, increasing slightly to 1,031 at the 2011 census.

John Keeley was born in July 1839 in Moreton In the Marsh in Gloucestershire, the son of a shoemaker. The family moved to Birmingham and John studied at the Birmingham School of Landscape Art under Edmund Watson. . In 1867, he married Harriet Godfrey (1850-1913) and they had four children, three daughters Bertha, Esther, Gertrude and John Albert, who was later known as Albert John, probably to differentiate from his father.

John was primarily a watercolour landscape painter and painted many of his best works of Welsh subjects, the Arthog area being painted fequently, as well as around his home in the Midlands. His work was often said to show the influence of David Cox, probably due to the fact that he trained under Edmund Watson. John Keeley taught classes at the 'Clarendon Art Fellowhip. He exhibited 333 paintings at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, where he was elected an Associate Member in 1898 and a full Member in 1902. He also exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, the RA, the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour (11), the Dudley Gallery and the Royal Society of British Artists.

The Clarendon Art Fellowship was formed in 1879 by Edmund Watson, a professional artist who as a youth went sketching with David Cox and Vincent Barbour producing sketches for the 'Graphic Illustrations of Warwickshire' now stored in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Included amongst the eminent founder members was Walter Langley, later to become a major figure in the Newlyn Society of Artists.

He lived the majority of his life in the Birmingham area, but after his wife died in 1913, he died in Staffordshire in 1930, where his daughter Bertha lived. He was still exhibiting up to his 80th year.

There is an oil portrait of John Keeley, by William John Wainwright PPRBSA which may be viewed at ArtUK.org. which dates to circa 1880 and is in the collection of the RBSA.

The watercolour is mounted with wash lines and is framed in a 7/8 inch gilt frame. It will be supplied with new brass hangers, new brass picture wire and will be ready to hang.

Provenance: Turtle Fine Art - see label on the reverse.

Image size: 10 x 6 11/16 inches - 25.5cm x 17cm

Frame size: 18 7/8 x 15 1/4 inches - 48cm x 38.75cm

Medium: Watercolours

Condition: Very Good. There is no foxing and the colours are strong. The mounts and frame are in very good condition..