Lot Essay
The picture has the same provenance as lot 84, the present owner being the artist's great-neice. Parsons specialised in painting flowers and was an enthusiastic gardener. It is no accident that the present example is Japanese in feeling as he visited Japan in 1892-4 and published his impressions of the country, Notes in Japan, in 1896. A pillar of the artistic community in the Cotswold village of Broadway (see lot 84), he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor and New Galleries, and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, of which he became President in 1905. His picture 'When Nature Painted all Things Gay' was bought for the Chantrey Bequest in 1887.