"AFTER THE RAIN - SUMMER LANDSCAPE" (1895) BY EDMUND MORISON WIMPERIS (BRITISH, 1835-1900)
Executed in oil on canvas in early giltwood frame; signed lower left "E.M. Wimperis '95"
Item # 011HRL15L 

The breeze is almost palpable in this windswept landscape, the trees bending gently as the storm moves through into the distance. The clouds are heavy as mist and rain continue over the windmill and village at the horizon. In the forefront, two women armed with buckets gather up some fresh water while in the distance a pair of figures strolls through open fields where sheep are freely grazing.

The work is signed in the lower left corner E.M. WIMPERIS and dated '95, the reverse still retaining early gallery labels from both Cooley and Richard Green of London. It hangs in an early and quite fine pierced giltwood frame.

Born at Flocker's Brook, Chester, England in February of 1835, Edmund Morison Wimperis initially studied wood-engraving in London under Mason Jackson and later with Myles Birket Foster. He simultaneously supported himself doing illustrations for, among others, the Illustrated London News.

Under the influence of his friend Thomas Collier, a very well-regarded watercolourist, Wimperis tried his hand at watercolour painting plein air landscapes. The two artists painted together frequently throughout the 1870s and 1880s, Wimperis with a strong preference for dramatic windswept scenes that watercolour expert Martin Hardie called "expansive landscapes with breadth and decision", noting that Wimperis "dealt tenderly with the form and movement of spacious skies and boldly with fleeting shadows cast over broken ground" (see Watercolour Painting in Britain, Vol III: The Victorian Period, London, Hardie, 1968, p. 157).

Wimperis was elected as a full Member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1870. In 1873 he became an associate member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, elected to full Member in 1875; he was elected to Vice President of the organization in 1895. In 1893 he was elected to full Member of the Royal Oil Painters Institute.

His work is held in the permanent collections of both the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as the British Museum.

Provenance:

• Cooling Galleries, London (label verso)
  
• Richard Green, Ltd., London (label verso)
  

Measurements: 31 3/4" H x 46 3/4" W x 2 3/8" D [frame]; 27 7/8" H x 42 5/8" W [canvas]

Condition Report:
Relined. Professionally conserved: cleaned and revarnished. Light surface craquelure throughout. Under UV, spot of inpainting center-bottom in the water, possible repair and associated inpainting to tree trunk behind the figures. Early frame, perhaps the first frame for the painting; frame has been professionally conserved with several replaced elements; it shows typical age appropriate wear including cracking of the elements, gilt loss and chipping.