Attrib. Wilfrid Gabriel de Glehn RA (1870–1951) - Watercolour Summer Time

Description

A delightful early 20th century watercolour by Wilfrid Gabriel de Glehn, depicting a delicate impressionistic landscape in light washes of blue and green. The artist has captured three young women, paused beside a tree along this picturesque stretch of water, with sunny farmers fields across the river. The watercolour is signed beneath the mount, which a picture indicates to the reverse. Well presented in a distressed gilt frame. Glazed. On wove.

Condition

The condition is typical for a picture of this age including some discolouration.

Size

14.5 x 23cm (5.7" x 9.1")
Framed Size: 32 x 41cm (12.6" x 16.1")

Artist Biography

Wilfrid Gabriel de Glehn RA (1870-1951) was an Impressionist British painter, elected to the Royal Academy in 1932.

Wilfried von Glehn (changed his name in May 1917) was born in Sydenham, south-east London. After schooling at Brighton College, he studied art briefly at the Royal Academy Schools in South Kensington before going on to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where for a time he lived with his French cousin, the artist Lucien Monod (1867-1957). In 1891 was hired by Edwin Austin Abbey and John Singer Sargent to assist them on their Boston Public Library mural project at Morgan Hall.

De Glehn would exhibit his own work first in Rome in 1894 and then in Paris in 1895; he was also elected an Associetaire of the Société des Artistes Français. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1896.

De Glehn met American-born artist Jane Erin Emmet (1873–1961) in New Rochelle, New York in 1903, and they were married there the following year. Following their wedding, the couple honeymooned in Cornwall, England, vacationed in Paris and Venice, and made a permanent home in Chelsea, London. However, they travelled extensively, often accompanying Sargent on his trips through Europe.

After world war I, de Glehn held solo exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries and in New York (1920). For the next decade the couple would spend summers in Cornwall and winters in France.

Although some experts rank de Glehn alongside Sargent, he is considered as something of a late British Renoir, for his deft use of sunlight and shadow.

He died in 1951, at the age of 80, at his home.