Friends

The subject of this work is the artist's wife, Katherine Graham, whom he married in 1891 while working in Newlyn. In 1895 they moved to Droitwich in the West Midlands, and by 1900 had settled at Grasmere in Westmorland, nearby to his wife's family home. His Royal Academy exhibit for 1900, 'Through the Mists of Time Past' depicted villagers reminiscing outside a cottage surrounded by giant lilies, roses and hollyhocks. Here Bramley continues the motif of the overgrown cottage garden in which his wife poses with the couple's dogs.
(see C. Fox and F. Greenacre, Artists of the Newlyn School 1880-1900, Newlyn Art Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, Penzance, 1979, p.166).