The quotations at the head of each section are taken from Graves' list of Royal Academy exhibitors, and represent the inspiration for the painting, as submitted to the Academy's catalogue by Eyre Crowe.

Title: The Seven Sisters, Vale of Elwy, N. Wales (1905)

Medium: oil

Size: 40 x 65 inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1905

Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1905, p. 120

Showing a scene near the Garthewin estate at Llanfair Talhaiarn in Denbighshire (the home of Crowe's nephew Robert William Wynne), this picture was predominantly painted in situ in August and September 1904, and finished over the next few months.

This painting was one of those remaining in Eyre Crowe's possession at his death, and was sold for £12 12s at an auction of his remaining works at Christie's in London on 18 March 1911.

Title: Mrs Spenser Wilkinson (1905)

Medium: oil

Size: 50 x 40 inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1905

Mrs Spenser Wilkinson was Eyre Crowe's niece Victoria (1863-1929), eldest daughter of Sir Joseph Archer Crowe. Viccy had been born in Germany, and married the eminent Professor Henry Spenser Wilkinson (1853-1937). The last of her six children had been born in 1899. The family lived in Chelsea, near Crowe's studio and the South Kensington Museum, and saw a great deal of their uncle. Crowe's diaries indicate that he was working on a portrait in 1902, but that serious work was begun in January 1904.

Title: Henry William Woolf (1905)

Medium: pen and ink

Size: 8 3/8 x 3¼ inches (214 x 84 mm)

Current owner: National Portrait Gallery

Henry William Woolf, according to the National Portrait Gallery website, lived from 1840 to 1931. He was a writer, publishing 'The Country of the Vosges' in 1891, and presumably knew Crowe through the Reform Club or some other social connection.

Title: Oliver Goldsmith at Lissoy (1906)

Medium: oil

Size: 40 x 65 inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1906

The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,

The never-failing brook, the busy mill' - The Deserted Village

Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures, 1906, p. 56

According to the critic Labouchère in the magazine Truth, whose review Crowe read on 24 May 1906, he had 'succeeded in making Goldsmith ridiculous, as [he] had previously done as regards Shelley'.

This painting was one of those remaining in Eyre Crowe's possession at his death, and was sold for £5 15s 6d at an auction of his remaining works at Christie's in London on 18 March 1911.

Title: The Loggerheads (1906-1907)

Medium: oil

Crowe visited North Wales in the summer of 1906 and sketched a number of places associated with the 18th century landscape painter Richard Wilson. He began work on an oil painting of Wilson painting the sign for the Loggerheads Inn near Mold, but had abandoned it by spring 1907.

Title: The Veteran's Pipe (1907)

Medium: oil

Size: 25½ x 13 inches (64 x 41 cm)

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1907

This painting possibly begun life as the 'Duke of York’s School for Boys, Chelsea', mentioned in Crowe's diary from September 1906 to March 1907. From January 1907 he began referring to the 'Chelsea Pensioner'.

This painting was one of those remaining in Eyre Crowe's possession at his death, and was sold for £4 14s at an auction of his remaining works at Christie's in London on 18 March 1911.

It was offered for auction by Bonham's of London three times in 2001 and 2002. At an auction on 5 February 2002, it sold for £320.

Title: Mendelssohn (1908)

Medium: oil

Size: 41 x 66½ inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1908

Reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures and Sculpture, 1908, p. 129

The subject of this picture is Mendelssohn composing his 'Rivulet' on the banks of the River Alyn at Rhydymwyn near Mold, North Wales. Crowe's diary mentions abandoning a picture called 'Rivulet' as unfinished in February 1906. He returned to the area in August and September 1907.

Copyright (c) 2005 Kathryn J. Summerwill. All rights reserved.