Lot Essay
With its overtones of Blake and Watts, this watercolour is a characteristic example of Stock's work, based firmly in the English Romantic tradition. Whilst Stock read widely amongst Dante, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe and Walt Whitman, his themes were often of his own invention and charged with personal significance. Born in Soho, he lost his sight in childhood, only to recover it after moving to the New Forest. He attended St. Martin's School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools and exhibited widely at the Royal Academy (1874-1910), the Royal Institutes of Painters in Oil-Colours and Watercolours, the Grosvenor Gallery, and elsewhere. Apart from a remarkable group of watercolours offered by Christie's in London on 4 November 1994, his works have rarely appeared on the market. This picture appears to be a variant of an oil represented in Stock's Witt Library file but unlocated.