Watercolour, signed lower left
Image size: 10 x 14 inches (25.5 x 35.5 cm)
Original gilt frame
Provenance
The Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition, 1922
Arthur Ackermann & Son
Private Collection
Painted by Lillian Stannard in 1920 it depicts the garden at Holme Lacy, Hereford and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1920, number 857. Lillian Stannard came from a family of artists, and was likely to have been taught by her father Henry Stannard, her earliest works were of butterflies, which we have an example in stock.
Stannard’s passion was flowers and this influenced her work for over forty years, competing with the likes of George Elgood, Ernest Arthur Rowe and Beatrice Parsons.
By the time she was thirty she had become one of the most celebrated painters of English gardens. Her most prestigious admirers were the Royal Family, who purchased a number of her works.
On the back of the frame is a poem, taken from a book by the poet-laurette Alfred Austin (1835-1913) “The Garden that I Love”, where he says:
“Had I a garden, claustral yews
Should shut out railing wind,
That Poets might on sadness muse
With a majestic mind;
With ear attuned and godlike gaze
Scan Heaven and fathom Hell,
Then through life’s labyrinthine maze,
Chant to us, All is well!”