Watercolour by Miles Birkett Foster

"Old Farm in Surrey" watercolour by Miles Birkett Foster c1870. In an original Victorian gilt watercolour frame.

Miles Birkett Foster was born in 1825, dying in 1899. He was apprenticed to the wood engraver Peter Landells and worked until around 1850 as an engraver and a black and white illustrator, making many designs for the Illustrated London News. Throughout the 1850’s he taught himself watercolour painting and thereafter exhibited some four hundred works at the ‘Old’ Watercolour Society, of which he was elected an Associate in 1860 and a full Member (‘R.W.S’) in 1862. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy. His house at Witley,Surrey, was partly decorated by the Pre-Raphaelites and became a centre for artists of many different types. He travelled widely on the continent, from his first visit to the Rhine in 1852 and he first visited Venice with Fred Walker in 1868. He was commissioned to make a series of fifty Venetian views by Charles Seely of Nottingham at a fee of £5,000. His work is illustrated in the Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists Vol II. His work is represented in the collections of the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Scotland and numerous provincial galleries in Britain.

Biblio: Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists; Dictionary of Victorian Artists; Bénézit: Dictionnaire des Peintres; Dictionary of Artists 1790-1893, Graves.

Dimensions: 145 x 242