Lot 38: EDWARD JOHN GREGORY, R.A. (1850-1909) BOULTER'S LOCK

signed EJGregory l.r., watercolour heightened with bodycolour over traces of pencil heightened with scratching out 28 by 39.5 cm.; 11 by 15 1/2 in. This delightful watercolour shows a group of rowing boats waiting to pass through Boulter's Lock, on the River Thames near Maidenhead. The painter's vantage point seems to have been the iron bridge that then crossed the more southerly of the two lock gates, looking northwards and upstream. Boulter's Lock had been constructed in 1830, and had a drop of six feet. It was rebuilt in 1912, but remains more or less as it appears in Gregory's watercolour. This particular reach of the river, close to the picturesque towns of Marlow and Cookham and the spectacular scenery of the Cliveden escarpment, easily reached from London by train to Maidenhead, was a great attraction to boating people and pleasure seekers generally in the late Victorian period. It is said that on one Sunday in June 1888, a total number of 800 boats and 72 steam launches passed through Boulter's Lock. What has been called the "Thames boating craze" was immortalized in Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889. E.J. Gregory seems himself to have enjoyed the life of the river. He had a house at Cookham Dene in the 1890s, and his obituary in the 1909 Art Journal records that he died in Marlow. From the early 1880s onwards he produced a series of paintings of riverside subjects, such as the watercolour Marooned (Royal Academy, 1887; Tate Gallery) and the oil The Sound of Oars (ex Sotheby's, 3rd November 1993, lot 257). His most ambitious painting, also entitled Boulter's Lock (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight) and showing boats emerging from the lock from a vantage point further downstream and closer to the water's surface than the present view, was worked on over a long period through until 1895. It was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1897, and subsequently brought the artist international fame when shown in Paris, St Louis and Toronto. Almost certainly the first idea for the large oil version of Boulter's Lock came to Gregory when he was working on the present watercolour sometime in the early 1880s. All of these Thames-inspired paintings are characterized by accuracy of observation, both of the natural scenery and the types of boats and the styles of dress of the people who Gregory incorporated into his works. However, a distinction may be drawn between the scale and elaboration of the large oil view of the lock - dependent as it was on innumerable drawn studies and sketches - and watercolours of the present type, the vivacity of which results from the speed and directness of their technique. The present watercolour was exhibited at the Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1883. It was bought by Charles Galloway, Gregory's principal patron, whose collection included more than a hundred works by the artist, estimated as about a third of Gregory's total output. PROVENANCE Charles J.Galloway, Esq.,of Thorneyholme, Knutsford; his sale, Christie's, 24th, 26th, 27th June 1905, lot 27 (L147) bt. Maple EXHIBITED Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, 1883, no.754 Preston, The Preston Guild Art Exhibition, 1902 LITERATURE Art Journal, 1883, p.194.