Lot Essay
Wilson's career as a painter of rural subjects was defined when he saw the work of Fred Walker (1840-1875) at the Great Exhibition in Paris of 1879 where he had been sent by Philip Cunliffe-Owen, a director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, to draw the English exhibits. Having started his career drawing works by Old Master and British artists for L'Art, a French periodical, he exhibited his first watercolour of the bucolic scenes by which he is best remembered in 1889. He exhibited thereafter mainly at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, and at the Royal Academy. The sitters in this example appear in many other of his watercolours, and the subject is entirely typical.