Robert Weir Allan (1852-1942) Boating on the Thames, Oil on Canvas

Code: 2443

Dimensions:

A beautiful 19th century Victorian oil on canvas depicting elegant figures boating on the river Thames, by Robert Weir Allan. Excellent quality and condition serene landscape by an accomplished artist. The work is signed lower left and presented in a good quality swept gilt frame. One of a pair that we are have available.

Artist: Robert Weir Allan (English, 1852-1942)

Title: Boating on the Thames

Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 19 x 23 in (48cm x 58 cm) framed approx

Condition: This work has been relined and is in very good condition

Robert Weir Allan was a prolific Scottish-born painter known mainly for his depiction of landscape and marine subjects. He was born in Glasgow on 11 November 1851 into a family that encouraged and valued his natural artistic ability, his father being a lithographer and amateur artist.

Allan was educated in Glasgow and was largely self-taught as an artist. He exhibited at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts when aged just 22, and two years later he had a painting selected for the Royal Academy in London. In 1875–80 he attended the Académie Julian in Paris, and then worked under Alexandre Cabanel at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He was influenced by the French school of rustic naturalism and also by French Impressionism.

Working plein-air, he developed a loose, painterly approach to landscape subjects and he sent many plein-air works from Paris to exhibitions in England. Although Allan settled to live in London around 1880, he travelled widely in Europe, Japan, the Middle East and America. He visited India from 1890-1982 and made a world tour in 1900.

His particular inspiration however was the north-east coast of Scotland – a subject to which he returned throughout his life. He exhibited extensively in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh, showing 189 works from 1874 onwards. Whilst living in Piccadilly, he became an active member of a number of leading exhibiting societies, including the New English Art Club of which he was a founder member. He became Vice-President of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours. He was equally at home with oil painting, and during his lifetime he had 84 paintings selected for exhibition at the Royal Academy. He won a medal at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900.

He moved from Piccadilly to Victoria and then to Buckingham Gate. In 1911 he married Georgia Trumbull, the daughter of Frederick Parker Trumbull of New York. Turnbull. In 1932 Allan was commissioned to paint the portrait of the former Prime Minister David Lloyd George.