Local artists to brighten up the living room
LET’S imagine you receive a letter from Twister and Swizz, solicitors, informing you that your Great Aunt Dorcas has left you a tidy stash of cash.
With interest rates as they are there’s not much point putting it in the bank, so you decide to invest in art and buy a painting that will hide that stain on the wallpaper over the fireplace in the living room.
Something by a local artist would be a good talking point when people pop in. “Do you like it? Yes, it’s by a painter who lived near here”.
A contender for Great Auntie’s windfall could be William Clarke Wontner (1857–1930).
His works are quite sought after today, in fact one sold six years ago at Christie’s for £80,000.
Wontner was also in demand as a portrait artist and a number of his works can be seen in the National Portrait Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London.
A celebrated artist in his day, Wontner spent the latter years of his life in Uckinghall, Ripple, a few miles from Tewkesbury.
He lived there with his two sisters and is buried in the local churchyard.
The son of a well-regarded and splendidly named architect William Hoff Wontner, William junior was a student at St John’s Wood Art School in London.
Described as an English academic classical artist in the Greco-roman style, he rose to celebrity as a painter of exotic women attired (often only just) in richly coloured fabrics, bejewelled, bedecked with flowers and other fripperies.
He was a great one for capturing his subjects with a look in their eye that suggested they were mid-way through a lofty thought, or had indigestion.
If I tell you that the titles of Wontner’s works include An Emerald Eyed Beauty, An Elegant Beauty, An Egyptian Beauty, The Fair Persian and (this one’s my favourite) Safie, One Of Three Ladies Of Baghdad – you probably get the idea of Wontner’s favoured subject matter.
Another local artist for your shopping list is Charles March Gere (1869– 1957).
Born in Gloucester, Gere worked as a book illustrator for the Kelmscott Press, which was owned by William Morris who lived in Gloucestershire at Kelmscott Manor, Lechlade.
In 1902 Gere moved to Painswick, where he lived for the rest of his life with his sister Margaret, who was also a painter and from then on he concentrated on landscapes many of them in Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds.
Rather lovely they are too and never short of bidders when they come up for auction.
An oil on canvas (33 inches by 57) painting by Gere titled Cotswold Holiday sold at Bonham’s for £3,750 in September 2010.
Marianne North is another artist who lived in Gloucestershire. She never married, but at the age of 41 in 1871 suddenly acquired wanderlust and embarked upon her first great trip of North America, Jamaica and Brazil.
During the next 14 years she visited six continents and produced more than 1,000 oil paintings on botanical subjects.
Marianne was great chums with Edward Lear, US President Grant and Charles Darwin.
At the latter’s suggestion she went to Australia in 1880 and then to New Zealand.
Between 1883 and 1885 she worked in South Africa, the Seychelles and Chile.
She continued to travel until the mid1880s despite poor health and then retired to Alderley, near Wotton-underedge, where she died on August 30, 1890.
The originals of her paintings are owned by Kew Gardens where they are on permanent display in a gallery dedicated exclusively to her work.
But you can buy prints of her paintings for about £20 each and at that price, thanks to Great Aunt Dorcas’s generosity, you could afford to cover up the stains on the wallpaper all over your house.