Eden was born in Liverpool, the son of William Eden (1844-1913), a watercolour painter, and a descendant of John Eden (1739-1801), a local cabinet maker. He soon went south, training at the St John's Wood Art School and the Royal Academy Schools and settling first in London and later in Oxfordshire. Nonetheless he is generally regarded as a Liverpool painter and the Walker Art Gallery has two of his paintings, Griselda at the 'Wheatsheaf' (1911) and The Old Apple Tree (1914), plus a good deal of archival material. His greatest claim to fame is that he was one of the artists who painted murals illustrating scenes from English history in the East Corridor of the Palace of Westminster, 1908-10. His subject was John Cabot and his Sons receiving the Charter from Henry VII to sail in search of new Lands, 1495. Frank Salisbury, John Byam Shaw, Frank Cadogan Cooper, Ernest Board and Henry Payne were the other artists involved, and the scheme was under the supervision of E.A. Abbey, who had recently completed major decorative paintings in Boston Public Library and London's Royal Exchange.

Despite the fact that he exhibited thirty-four pictures at the Royal Academy between 1900 and 1928, Eden's work is now extremely rare; his Witt Library file contains only five examples, of which only one has been on the market (Christie's, 21 October 1977, lot 152). Stylistically he belongs to the late Pre-Raphaelite tradition, which he tended to interpret with considerably eccentricity. The woodland background in our picture recalls The Old Apple Tree at Liverpool, although this is eight years earlier.

We are grateful to Edward Morris, Curator of Fine Art at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, for his help in preparing this entry.