Lot 80

WILLIAM FRASER GARDEN (1856-1921) (Lots 80-82) William Garden Fraser was born at Chatham, Kent, shortly before his father retired from the Army Medical Department. The Frasers were a Scottish family, but the Surgeon Major, his wife and nine children settled in Bedford where their seven sons were educated at Bedford School. Six of the seven boys became artists, and Garden changed his name to William Fraser Garden in order to distinguish himself from his brothers. Garden settled at the House in the Fields near Hemingford Abbots, Huntingdonshire until 1898. He married Ethel in 1889 but she was not overly fond of Huntingdonshire life and Garden's somewhat eccentric ways and left him in 1904. Garden lived at the Ferryboat Inn in Holywell towards the end of his life, paying his bills with drawings. His eccentricities led him to a nocturnal existence and one night, in January 1921, he missed his step outside the inn and died from head injuries two weeks later. The almost photographic detail and crisp colouring demonstrate the late nineteenth-century revival of painstakingly observed realism. His landscapes are rendered with a precision which can capture the stillness of a calm day or the cool clarity of a winter's afternoon.

William Fraser Garden (1856-1921)

A great tree on a riverbank

Details

William Fraser Garden (1856-1921)
A great tree on a riverbank
signed and dated 'W.F. GARDEN./'92' (lower left)
pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour, on paper
11 1/8 x 15¼ in. (28.3 x 38.8 cm.)

Sale room notice

Please note this watercolour will be sold unframed.

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Lot Essay

Two comparable watercolours depicting trees by the banks of a river were included in Christopher Wood; Christie's, London, 28 February 2007, lots 102 and 103.

For other works by Fraser Garden see lots 81 and 82.

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