A very similar study of trees, using the same gloriously liquid and minimalist technique exists in the Tate Collection, painted in 1922 and acquired by the National Arts Collection Fund the following year.

The watercolour we have for sale, still limpid and fresh despite its eighty four years of existence, is also dated 1922 and clearly derives stylistically from that same period of experimentation with the medium. In the Chronological List of places at which Steer painted (signed by him) for 1922, the artist lists Shirehampton, near Bristol as the principal place in which he worked that year.

Steer’s watercolours are very much in the tradition of Turner and Constable.

Provenance

Ernest Brown and Phillips, Leicester Galleries

Collection:

Christopher Neild Barlow

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