ARTIST: Frederick Waters Watts (British, 1800 - 1862)
NAME: Landscape - The River Stour (titled on verso)
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
CONDITION: 1" scratch by the middle upper edge. Some craquelure. Few small scattered inpaintings (biggest 1 x 1 cm).
SIGHT SIZE: 13 x 24 inches / 33 x 60 cm
FRAME SIZE: 17 x 28 inches / 43 x 71 cm
SIGNATURE: on verso
CATEGORY: antique vintage painting
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SKU#: 118186
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BIOGRAPHY:
Landscape painter Watts lived on Hampstead High Street in London in 1821, at the same time as William Constable who had a great influence on his painting style. Constable was aware of Watts' attempts to work in his style and remarked on the similarity when both had works hanging in the same exhibition.A landscape painter, Frederick Water Watts has often been mistakenly called Frederick William Watts. "According to his second wife, Julia Watts, he was born in Bath, Somerset, on 7 October 1800. His father had been in the navy, and his mother was Mary Eyre, daughter of Ambrose Eyre, rector of Leverington, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire; he may also be the Frederic Waters Watts, son of William and Mary Watts, who was baptized on 9 July 1801 at St Albans Abbey, St Albans, Hertfordshire. Watts was probably the William Watts who entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1817, aged seventeen, and won its silver medals in 1819, 1820, and 1821. He was certainly the Frederick W. Watts who exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1821 to 1860, the British Institution from 1823 to 1862, and elsewhere."Watts lived all his working life in the Hampstead area of London but painted landscapes throughout much of Britain. Also living at Hampstead at the same time was William Constable (1783-1861) who had a great influence on Watts' painting style. Constable was aware of Watts' attempts to work in his style and remarked on the similarity when both had works hanging in the same exhibition.Watts appears also to have visited France in 1826. His exhibited pictures of the 1820s and 1830s usually bore specific topographic titles and were closely handled; later canvases were more broadly painted and often imitated the mature work of John Constable. Many carried generalized titles such as River Scene with Barges, enabling others subsequently to identify them as scenes in 'Constable country' and to mis-attribute them to Constable himself.