Harold Gilman (1876-1919)

Gilman and Sylvia Hardy married during the summer of 1917. Mrs. Gilman's dating of the present work for the 1954 retrospective exhibition would indicate that it had been painted during their honeymoon in Wells. Two drawings with Somerset titles exist from this period: Landscape near Wells (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) and Somerset Landscape (Art Gallery of South Australia), and there is another known oil painting Branches in Leaf, Somerset, sold in these Rooms on 17 June 1977, lot 68 (private collection) (see A. Causey, Harold Gilman, catalogue for the 1981 exhibition, p. 84).