Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are offering this lovely landscape oil on canvas by the artist Samuel Lawson Booth RCamA, who has signed the painting in the lower left hand corner S. L. Booth RCA. The painting depicts either a sunset, or dawn view of a lake with a rocky foreshore to the left, with a group of trees wearing their autumnal garb, and a backdrop of distant mountains. Unfortunately, we are unaware of the location. The painting has a wonderful feeling of warmth and tranquillity about it.

Samuel Lawson Booth was born in Rawdon, Leeds, Yorkshire on the 19th May, 1836, the son of a mason. He attended a public elementary school, where the fees were 2 1/2 pence a week, although he had been refused a place at the grammar school, where he later became a teacher. He then attended a Government School of Design while in his teens, later gaining a scholarship and in 1857 received a medal. He worked in Bradford for a while as a lithographic printer, but continued his painting and teaching at the Bradford Technical College, where his work was noticed by John Ruskin, who pencilled an appreciation on one of his canvasses.

By 1871, he was living at 44 Rochdale Road in Manchester, with his wife Ann nee Whitaker, also from Leeds, who he had marrived in 1862 and his daughter Alexandra Louisa (1863-1942). By 1881, he was living at 56 Roe Lane Ormskirk and listed as an artist and portrait painter. (Alexandra was listed as an art student and she exhibited a painting at the Manchester City Art Gallery in 1882 (Dictionary of British Artists).

In 1882 he went to the USA, where he travelled for 8000 miles, a lot of it on horseback in Colorado, New Mexico, where he met Apaches, and the Rockies. In the British Newspaper archive, there is a long letter from him to a friend, where he tells about meeting the indians in an Apache village and sketching them. Apart from this trip, he also travelled to Switzerland, Italy, France, Palestine and Egypt. Some of his views of Palestine have achieved very high prices.

In the census records of 1891, 1901 and 1911. he and his family lived at various addresses in Roe Lane, Ormskirk and we note that in the census of 1911, in his own hand, he mentions that he had 6 children of whom only 2 are living. This two must have been Alexandra mentioned above and his son James Henry Lawson Booth (1875-1951).

Samuel became Mayor of Southport 1897-1898, he was made a Justice of the Peace in 1905. He was elected a Member of the Royal Cambrian Academy RCamA, with whom he had exhibited 132 paintings over the years. He also exhibited in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. There are 68 auction results for his work on artprice.com.

The painting has been newly framed in a very nice, ornate 4" bronzed gilt frame, that complements the tones of the painting very well. It will be supplied wired and ready to hang.

Image size: 23 3/8" x 15 3/68" - 59.35cm x 39cm

Frame size: 31 7/8" x 23 7/8" - 80.9cm x 60.65cm

Medium: Oils on canvas

Condition: Very good. That canvas is now clean and taut and there are no repairs. There is no craquelure but there are slight stretcher marks consistent with age. The frame is new.