Collection / Paintings & Screens
17436
‘Les Lavandieres’ by Sir William Llewellyn PRA
‘Les Lavandieres’ by Sir William Llewellyn PRA
Dimensions: H: 51 in / 130 cm | W: 35 in / 89 cm
PRICE: £65,000
17436
‘Les Lavandieres’
By Sir Samuel Henry William Llewellyn PRA (1858–1941)
Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1887, this is a large scale, rare to the market example of Llewellyn’s mature work in the plein air manner, and is provenanced to the descendants of the original purchaser.
Private Collection, UK; thence by descent
Sir (Samuel Henry) William Llewellyn PRA (1858–1941) was a noted and important English painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and served as President of the Royal Academy from 1928 to 1938, and was awarded the Albert Medal (Royal Society of Arts) in 1933.
Llewellyn has 67 paintings in British national collections, including a portrait of industrialist and philanthropist Sir Alexander Grant held by the University of Edinburgh.
A student of Sir Edward Poynter, (whom he later succeeded as the President of the Royal Academy), and later, in France, under the direction of Jules Joseph Lefebvre, (member of the Legion d’honneur, and a leading light in the Academie des Beaux-Arts, and painting professor at the Academie Julian); Sir Samuel Llewellyn worked in the broad brush plein air manner in the French countryside, especially in Brittany, with the women (Les Lavandieres) depicted being shown in regional Breton costumes.
Returning to England, he worked with the Newlyn School artists colony; his early exhibited works, around the date of our painting include prosaic life views of the locals of St Ives and Newlyn. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1884 onwards in a more conservative manner from the early 1900’s as a portraitist, his subjects including Queen Mary (1912), a gift from Queen Mary to King George V, now in the Royal Collection Trust.
Exhibitor at the New English Arts Club, the Grosvenor Gallery and the Royal Society of British Artists, he was appointed a trustee of the National Gallery from 1933-1940.
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