Lot Essay
An artist of great talent, this is one of only a few works by which Bateman is known. In 1965 'The Pool of Bathesda', striking in its debt to Mantegna and Piero della Francesca, created a sensation when it was sold at Christie's (19 November, lot 108). It is now in the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art. A century earlier, his watercolour, 'The Dead Knight', exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, had excited admiration from the Art Journal of 1869, (p. 81): 'there is in these Dudley landscapes dreaminess instead of definiteness and smudginess in place of sentiment... landscapes of a certain peculiar impressiveness, whether from a wooly touch, or a thin dusky wash, which maybe supposed symbolic of poetry.' Critics aknowledged that Bateman's work, along with that of his friend Walter Crane, and others of their circle whom they dubbed the 'Poetry-without-Grammar-School', represented a new aesthetic ideal. The Art Journal of 1870, p. 87, was initially bemused: 'These Dudley people are proverbially peculiar. Thus it would be hard to find anywhere talent associated with greater eccentricity than in the clever, yet abnormal creations of Walter Crane, Robert Bateman and Simeon Solomon', but continued, 'We hail with gladness the advent of an art which reverts to historic associations and carries the mind back to olden times when painting was the twin sister of poetry'.
A man of many talents, Bateman was equally skilled as a sculptor, architect and gardener, his parents having transformed the gardens at Biddulph Grange, Staffordshire, into one of the most significant of the century. Sustained by his position as a landowner, his approach to art can be compared to that of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, a kinsman of his wife. Bateman himself was encouraged in his artistic career by the marine artist E.W. Cooke, a friend of his parents who had helped them with the design of their garden, and who took his protege on a sketching tour of Spain in 1860-1 and Venice in 1863. Bateman joined the Royal Academy Schools in 1865 on the recommendation of Sir Francis Grant, and between that year and 1874 exhibited fourteen works at the Dudley Gallery. He also showed at the Grosvenor Gallery and had his work bought by William Graham, Burne-Jones's significant patron. The spirit of Burne-Jones's work provided Bateman with his initial inspiration.
A man of many talents, Bateman was equally skilled as a sculptor, architect and gardener, his parents having transformed the gardens at Biddulph Grange, Staffordshire, into one of the most significant of the century. Sustained by his position as a landowner, his approach to art can be compared to that of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, a kinsman of his wife. Bateman himself was encouraged in his artistic career by the marine artist E.W. Cooke, a friend of his parents who had helped them with the design of their garden, and who took his protege on a sketching tour of Spain in 1860-1 and Venice in 1863. Bateman joined the Royal Academy Schools in 1865 on the recommendation of Sir Francis Grant, and between that year and 1874 exhibited fourteen works at the Dudley Gallery. He also showed at the Grosvenor Gallery and had his work bought by William Graham, Burne-Jones's significant patron. The spirit of Burne-Jones's work provided Bateman with his initial inspiration.