Samuel Maurice Jones RCA (1853-1932) - Watercolour Welsh Landscape

Description

A lake scene by the prominent Welsh artist Samuel Maurice Jones RCA (1853-1932). The painting features a common motif in Jones's work of a single, solitary figure passing through the landscape who can be seen to the left of the composition. Signed to the lower-left edge. On wove.

Condition

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

Size

32.6 x 57.4cm (12.8" x 22.6")
Sheet: 36.7 x 60.1cm (14.4" x 23.7")

Artist Biography

Samuel Maurice Jones RCA (1853-1932) was a Welsh landscape painter and illustrator, particularly active in North Wales. Working principally in watercolour, Jones made numerous studies and paintings of the fields near Caernarfon and the Conway Valley. Many of these rural studies have an idealised pastoral character suggestive of the English picturesque and Romantic landscape traditions originating in the works of John Constable and developed by J.M.W. Turner.

Jones was trained first at the Caernarfon School of Art under the tutelage of John Cambrian Rowland and later in London where he studied under William Collingwood between 1870-73. While he was in London, Jones met two figures closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: the art critic, John Ruskin, and the painter, Holman Hunt, who reviewed and offered constructive criticism of his work. Shortly afterwards Jones returned to Caernarfon in order to pursue his career as an artist. From the time of his artistic training onwards, Jones's primary interest lay in depicting landscapes. The notebook of his lessons under Collingwood between 1870-1873 report that Jones was encouraged to go on frequent sketching trips back home in Wales, including to Betws-y-Coed, drawing directly from nature. Jones continued this practice of drawing en plein air after his return from London, as his sketchbooks of the 1880s and 1890s suggest. Jones's watercolours of the 1880s depict rural scenes featuring quaint cottages, deserted castles, shaded country lanes and rivers, and often, single, solitary figures, passing through or at work in the landscape.