William Henry Pike RBA, Figures on a Devon Road – 1869 watercolour painting

William Henry Pike RBA Figures on a Devon Road

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View the full Collection: Devonshire Landscapes: 19th-century Modbury & Plymouth

An original 1869 watercolour painting, William Henry Pike RBA, Figures on a Devon Road.

A charming 19th-century Devonshire scene.

William Henry Pike RBA (1846–1908) lived at Tavistock Place, Plymouth. He painted West Country landscapes in Devon and Cornwall, in both oil and watercolour. In 1881 he moved to London and visited Venice, thereafter painting many Venetian scenes. He was made a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1889 and exhibited regularly, including at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour.

Works by Pike can be found in the collections of the British Museum; Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter; and The Box, Plymouth.

One of a small number of works by William Henry Pike RBA (1846–1908) that we have for sale.

Devonshire Landscapes: 19th-century Modbury & Plymouth

This picture forms part of an interesting collection of 19th-century works associated with Modbury in South Devon and the leading exponents of what could be considered a Devonshire Landscape School. The collection includes watercolours by Philip Mitchell RI, Henry Andrews Luscombe, Samuel Cook, William Henry Pike RBA, S.G. Williams Roscoe and John Penson. Collectively the work of these artists focussed on local landscapes such as Dartmoor and the River Exe, and coastal and maritime subjects at Plymouth, the Plymouth Sound and Tamar estuary.

In 1883 the art & science writer and lecturer George Pycroft published a book titled 'Art in Devonshire', in which he observed that the county of Devon was second only to Middlesex (London) in producing artists of historical note. He writes: 'we find that our county really heads the list as an art-producing land. Of all English provincial cities, Plymouth with its neighbourhood stands first, as the parent of six painters of the highest order… viz., Sir Joshua Reynolds, Prout, Eastlake, Haydon, Northcote, and Solomon Hart, and also of Rogers and Johns, the landscape painters.' He goes on to celebrate the 19th-century Devonshire landscape painters whose work is a 'true transcript from nature' and a welcome departure from the fashionable Claudian artifice of the preceding century. He attributes this truth in landscape to 'that loveliness of the earth, the air, and the water, with which Devonshire is endowed before all the counties of our land'. Whilst Pycroft's assessment betrays his bias, it nevertheless highlights the quality of landscape painting in Devon in the 19th-century and its role in the changing nature of British landscape art.

Provenance: Mary-Rose Rogers (1928–2012) by descent from her father William Langworthy Andrews Rogers (1889–1976) of Old Traine, Modbury.