Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942) [Aw281]
LANDSCAPE NEAR POOLE, 1916
Watercolour; signed and dated lower right: P.W. Steer 1916 (H.26 cm, W. 34 cm)
Philip Wilson Steer was born in Birkenhead on 28 December 1860, the youngest child of the painter Philip Steer (1810–1871). He was refused entry to the Royal Academy Schools in 1882 so went to Paris, studying at the Académie Julian under Bouguereau in 1882, and the École des Beaux-Arts under Cabanel in 1883. Both were conservative academic artists, and there is no evidence that Steer was aware of the development of Impressionism while in Paris; his early plein air oil paintings owe more to the work of an earlier generation of French landscape painters such as Jules Bastien-Lepage, and perhaps Corot.
Ironically, Steer’s introduction to Impressionism probably took place in London during a visit in the summer of 1883. It was then that he saw Durand-Ruel’s exhibition of Impressionist paintings at Dowdeswell’s Gallery, including the work of Monet, Pissarro and Renoir. By the late 1880s, Steer was the leading follower of French Impressionism in England. The beach scenes he painted between 1887 and 1889 on the English and French coasts are indebted to the style of Monet and Sisley, with their light colour palette and flickering brushstrokes.
This work belongs to a later phase in Steer’s career, but takes us back to an artistic tradition that pre-dates Impressionism and is woven into the history of English watercolour painting. After the mid 1890s, Steer spent his summers visiting many of the favoured sites of the late eighteenth-century Picturesque Tour, and a re-appraisal of the landscapes of Turner and Constable is evident in his mature style. In this watercolour there are echoes of Turner’s later works in the intensity of the colour and the summary treatment of form, and of Constable’s fascination with the ever-changing English sky.
Exhibited: Arts Council Touring Exhibition, Some 20th Century English Paintings and Drawings, 1987, no. 2; Sotheby’s, London, Watercolours from Winchester College, 1988, no. 51.
Provenance: Gift of Harry Collison, 1940.