Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are very pleased to offer for sale this rare and lovely watercolour by the Welsh artist Thomas Prytherch, who has signed the painting in the lower left corner and dated it 1906. Verso the artist has written 'Lord Burleigh T. Prytherch Wroxeter 1906'. After some research, we have found that this painting is based on the poem Lord of Burleigh by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and show the pertinent part below

In her ear he whispers gaily,
'If my heart by signs can tell,
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily,
And I think thou lov'st me well.'
She replies, in accents fainter,
'There is none I love like thee.'
He is but a landscape-painter,
And a village maiden she.
He to lips, that fondly falter,
Presses his without reproof
Leads her to the village altar,

The painting shows Lord Burleigh, seated on a wooden bench, wooing the village maiden, with the accoutrements of his trade as a landscape painter, leaning against the wall on the right. The are seated beneath the spreading branches of a tree.

Thomas Prytherch was born in Dowlais, Glamorganshire in 1864. He was the son of an ironworker and came from a humble background, indeed by the age of 10 he was working in the Dowlais ironworks. Lady Wimborne, the wife of the owner of the ironworks noticed his work and had him transferred to the engineering drawing office. About 5 years later, Pritchard Morgan MP, who was MP for Merthyr Tydfil at this time, saw his political cartoons and sent him to the Slade School of Art. He apparently revisited the Merthyr Tydfil area often and some of his large oils are of this locality.

He painted in oils and watercolours and apparently worked from a studio in Wroxeter, Nr. Shrewsbury, as evidenced by this inscription on the back of this watercolour. He exhibited three paintings at the Royal Academy and 1 at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

His patrons included Lord Barnard and Lord Bradford of Weston Park.

There are 10 of his oil paintings in the National Collection and 8 of them may be seen at Cyfarthfa Castle in Merthyr Tydfil and 2 at the Carmarthenshire Museums Trust. To see these paintings put the artist's name into google and look at the BBC - Your Paintings site.

Further details of his life are sketchy and he managed to avoid being on any census until 1911, when he was in his forties and was listed as an Artist Painter, living in Wroxeter, Shropshire with his Aunt. He died in Merthyr Tydfil in 1926.

He is listed in The Dictionary of British Artists (Collectors' Club) and The Dictionary of Victorian Painters by Christopher Wood.

There are a few of his paintings listed on the auction sites, but the latest one of his watercolours to sell, sold by £4,200 in 2013. It was 50" x 30". His work is rarely on the market.

The painting has been newly double mounted in two tone acid free mountboard and is newly framed in a 1 1/2" gilt frame. It will be supplied wired and ready to hang.

Image size 19" x 13" - 48cm x 33cm

Frame size 27 1/4" x 21 3/4" - 69.15cm x 55.25cm

Medium Watercolours with gum arabic

Condition Very good condition. There is no foxing or fading. The mounts and frame are new.