The Lily Pond

Stannard’s The Lily Pond depicts a view in an English country garden in full-bloom in the summer. In the foreground we see the tranquil lily pond, which gives the work its title. The mirror flat water reflects the surrounding landscape and its surface is adorned by numerous lily pads, their white flowers blooming. At the centre of the composition is a green bench, sheltered within an alcove created by two large scale topiary trees, providing a potential resting place for walkers to sit and contemplate the beauty of the pond. On either side there are long stemmed wild flowers, possibly poppies and other varieties, in various shades of pink, white and lilac. The predominant shades of green from the trees and pawn, combined with the black water of the deep pond serve to emphasise the bright beauty of the flowers. 

It was fashionable in Victorian and Edwardian times to have one’s beautiful garden painted by an accomplished artist, giving rise to ‘garden painters’. The period leading up to the First World War was the golden age of British gardening, and therefore the golden age of British garden painting. This was the result of a combination of growing interest in gardening and art becoming more commercialised. A reaction against the industrial revolution and movements such as Arts and Crafts saw a nostalgic desire to re-engage with an idyllic rural life. Many garden artists, such as Stannard, worked in watercolour, a much more affordable medium for the growing number of middle class collectors. It was also the ideal medium for this subject as it allowed for ‘en plain air’ painting, and could capture the effects of fleeting light and the vibrant colours of flowers. 

Botanical and flower paintings, particularly in watercolour, were long seen as one of the more acceptable genres of art for women to pursue. Though women artists as flower and garden painters is often seen to reduce them to amateurs, it was in fact an excellent opportunity for them to become commercially successful artists in their own right.  

Lilian Stannard

Lilian Stannard was an English illustrator and watercolour painter, specialising in garden views. Born in Froxfield, Bedfordshire in 1877, she was the second daughter of Henry Stannard, a sporting painter and art teacher who taught all five of his children to paint. Three of the five, including Lilian, went on to have careers as professional landscape painters. 

Lilian made her exhibition debut in 1898 at the Royal Society of British Artists with a watercolour study of a small tortoiseshell and cornflowers, atypical of her subsequent work. She then completed a well received series of detailed butterfly studies which were used on postcards and in gardening books, including Horace and Walter Wright’s The Perfect Garden (1908), Beautiful Flowers and How to Grow Them (1909) and Popular Garden Flowers (1911). This led to lucrative commissions from owners of some of the finest gardens in England. Stannard’s popularity grew and in June 1906 she held a solo exhibition entitled Summer Gardens of England at the Mendoza Gallery. Many of England’s grandest gardens and houses were represented including Woburn Abbey, Penshurst Place, Hampton Court and Levens Hall with the Princess of Wales in attendance, buying Stannard’s work The Lover’s Walk, Wavendon House. The exhibition was highly praised by both The Observer and The Telegraph and led to a commission from Lady Anastasia Wernher to paint a series of views of the gardens a Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire and an exhibition in 1907 of a further thirty watercolours, Flower Gardens of England, again at the Mendoza Gallery. 

Stannard married Dr. Walter Silas and the couple moved from Bedfordshire to London where their two daughters, Elizabeth and Kathleen were born. Stannard continued to exhibit, with two joint shows with Charles E. Brittan Jr and a series of solo exhibitions in the 1920s and 30s. She also exhibited at the Society of Women Artists, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Walker Art Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Cambrian Academy and Dudley Gallery Art Society.

By the end of the First World War she was well established, with her style of painting changing little in the inter-war years, continuing to use vibrant colours to evoke a sense of nostalgia for the English countryside in her depictions of grand and cottage gardens. She remained popular with the public but was often overlooked by critics and art historians, reflecting a tendency by scholars to reduce landscapes and watercolours to the realm of ‘feminine pastime’ rather than ‘high-art’.