Paul Maitland 'Garden at Shottermill Hall, Surrey.' (1908) pastels on paper.

£800.00

Paul Maitland (1863 to 1909) ‘Garden at Shottermill Hall, Surrey.’ (1908) pastels on paper and stuck to cardboard. Initials at lower right, house in silver wooden frame and behind plexiglass.

Dimensions: 18.5 cm x 14.5 cm, with dimensions 19.5 cm x 23.5 cm

This work shows the striking effects that can be achieved by pastel on rough paper, especially in the creation of a velvet shadowy darkness .

Paul Maitland was born on 12th October 1863 in the parlour of the family home at 7 Edith Grove, between Fulham Road and King's Road, which was then in the Brompton area of London. He had scoliosis as a baby, a condition that causes side-to-side curvature of the spine. In 1879, at the age of 16, Paul enrolled at the National Art Training School in London (the future Royal College of Art) and it was on his first day of term that he met the man who would have the most profound effect on his life: the French émigré artist Théodore Roussel.

 After graduating, Maitland painted in a similar way to Roussel, factories, wharves and warehouses along the river Thames.  He chose to paint the old city of London in a modern way, and for this, there appears to have been a ready market for his work. It was through Roussel that Maitland became acquainted with Whistler and his circle, which included Walter Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer and other leading artists of the day.

Maitland later joined the New English Art Club (NEAC) which had been founded by artists including Wilson Steer, John Singer Sargent, Frederick Brown and Stanhope Forbes. The New English functioned on democratic principles quite different from the top-down decision making of both the Society of British Artists under Whistler's presidency and the jury system of the Royal Academy.

Maitland had joined the club a year after Walter Sickert, whose own arrival had crystallised a split within the NEAC between the more conservative artists and those who looked to the example of French Impressionism.

The latter appeared as a breakaway group, the 'London Impressionists', in an exhibition at the Goupil Gallery, New Bond Street, London in December 1889. The show attracted considerable press coverage of which many reviews were positive. The Graphic picked out two of Maitland's six pictures for special merit, with one newspaper ranking them above those by Sickert.

From the 1890s, Maitland was painting the London parks much as the French Impressionists had and still were (Camille Pissarro painted a well-received picture of Hyde Park in 1893) but here Maitland's pictures were radically different.

He was a casual observer, a flâneur, making small intimate pictures and, unlike the French Impressionists, he was pulling landscapes into a sharper focus, describing an ordinary world, places and people he knew. His pictures bound him to London, its place, its character and its culture.

In May 1909 Maitland travelled to Surrey with his friend and patron Arthur Collins who was a favourite Equerry of Queen Victoria, mentor for Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's daughter and Gentleman Usher to Edward VII.

They stayed at the home of their mutual friend Elizabeth Josephine Forster, who, as well as having a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, owned Shottermill Hall just outside Farnham in Surrey. It was here on 13th May, after a full day's painting on the Surrey Hills, Maitland died from a heart attack. He was 45. This pastel picture is from the year before Maitland died and shows a portion of the rear garden at Shottermill Hall.

Paul Maitland (1863 to 1909) ‘Garden at Shottermill Hall, Surrey.’ (1908) pastels on paper and stuck to cardboard. Initials at lower right, house in silver wooden frame and behind plexiglass.

Dimensions: 18.5 cm x 14.5 cm, with dimensions 19.5 cm x 23.5 cm

This work shows the striking effects that can be achieved by pastel on rough paper, especially in the creation of a velvet shadowy darkness .

Paul Maitland was born on 12th October 1863 in the parlour of the family home at 7 Edith Grove, between Fulham Road and King's Road, which was then in the Brompton area of London. He had scoliosis as a baby, a condition that causes side-to-side curvature of the spine. In 1879, at the age of 16, Paul enrolled at the National Art Training School in London (the future Royal College of Art) and it was on his first day of term that he met the man who would have the most profound effect on his life: the French émigré artist Théodore Roussel.

 After graduating, Maitland painted in a similar way to Roussel, factories, wharves and warehouses along the river Thames.  He chose to paint the old city of London in a modern way, and for this, there appears to have been a ready market for his work. It was through Roussel that Maitland became acquainted with Whistler and his circle, which included Walter Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer and other leading artists of the day.

Maitland later joined the New English Art Club (NEAC) which had been founded by artists including Wilson Steer, John Singer Sargent, Frederick Brown and Stanhope Forbes. The New English functioned on democratic principles quite different from the top-down decision making of both the Society of British Artists under Whistler's presidency and the jury system of the Royal Academy.

Maitland had joined the club a year after Walter Sickert, whose own arrival had crystallised a split within the NEAC between the more conservative artists and those who looked to the example of French Impressionism.

The latter appeared as a breakaway group, the 'London Impressionists', in an exhibition at the Goupil Gallery, New Bond Street, London in December 1889. The show attracted considerable press coverage of which many reviews were positive. The Graphic picked out two of Maitland's six pictures for special merit, with one newspaper ranking them above those by Sickert.

From the 1890s, Maitland was painting the London parks much as the French Impressionists had and still were (Camille Pissarro painted a well-received picture of Hyde Park in 1893) but here Maitland's pictures were radically different.

He was a casual observer, a flâneur, making small intimate pictures and, unlike the French Impressionists, he was pulling landscapes into a sharper focus, describing an ordinary world, places and people he knew. His pictures bound him to London, its place, its character and its culture.

In May 1909 Maitland travelled to Surrey with his friend and patron Arthur Collins who was a favourite Equerry of Queen Victoria, mentor for Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's daughter and Gentleman Usher to Edward VII.

They stayed at the home of their mutual friend Elizabeth Josephine Forster, who, as well as having a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, owned Shottermill Hall just outside Farnham in Surrey. It was here on 13th May, after a full day's painting on the Surrey Hills, Maitland died from a heart attack. He was 45. This pastel picture is from the year before Maitland died and shows a portion of the rear garden at Shottermill Hall.