The Old Plane Tree

Date

1887 (painted)

Artist/maker

Wallis, George (FSA), born 1811 - died 1891 (painter (artist))

Materials and Techniques

Oil on canvas

Marks and inscriptions

'George Wallis. 1887.'

Dimensions

Height: 37.1 cm approx., Width: 72.6 cm approx.

Object history note

Given by the Misses Kate and Rosa Wallis, the artist's daughters, 1906

Descriptive line

Oil painting, 'The Old Plane Tree', George Wallis, 1887

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990, p. 292
The following is the full text of the entry:

Born Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, 8 June 1811, trained as a coach and heraldic painter before practising as an artist in Manchester 1832-7. Entered Government School of Design 1841; headmaster of Schools of Art at Spitalfields 1843, Manchester 1844 and Birmingham 1851. Organised first exhibition in England of art manufactures at Royal Institution, Manchester, and gave first course of lectures on principles of decorative art 1845. Worked on Great Exhibition 1851 and International Exhibition 1862. Visited USA 1853. Appointed to South Kensington Museum 1858, Keeper of Art 1863, retiring a month before he died; promoted the circulation of works of art from South Kensington to provincial museums. Contributed to the Art Journal, lectured extensively, and published several books, from On the Cultivation of a Popular Taste in the Fine Arts (1839) to British Art, Pictorial, Decorative, and Industrial: a Fifty Years' Retrospect (1882). Elected FSA 1878. The catalogue of the 1919 exhibition of his paintings states that he exhibited at the RA and BI; he may be the G Wallis whose only exhibit was a 'View of Cardigan Bay' at the RA in 1872 (several Welsh scenes were in the 1919 show). Died Wimbledon, London, 24 October 1891; his daughter Rosa was a flower and watercolour painter, his sons George H and Sir Whitworth Wallis were directors of the Bethnal Green Museum and then (respectively) the Nottingham and Birmingham Museums. His studio sale was at Christie's 22 February 1892. His portrait by Alphonse Legros is in the V&A collections (896-1892), as is an etched self-portrait (E5750-1906).
LIT: Art Journal 1891, p384 (obit with portrait); Magazine of Art XV, December 1891, p69 (obit with portrait); Catalogue of Works by the late George Wallis ... exhibition catalogue with biographical introduction, Municipal Art Gallery and Museum, Wolverhampton, 1919

The Old Plane Tree
457-1906 Neg 78948
Canvas, 37.1 X 72.6 cm (14? X 28? ins) Signed and dated 'George Wallis. 1887.' br
Given by the Misses Kate and Rosa Wall is (the artist's daughters) 1906
The view is towards the south, looking from the Library block, before Aston Webb's new museum building of 1899-1909. The great plane tree was on the site of the present room 43. Wallis made an etching of the composition, evidently also in 1887 (impr in the V&A collections, E5752-1906), and there is a photograph of the tree from the opposite direction of about 1890; both are illustrated by John Physick, The Victoria and Albert Museum: the history of its building 1982, p174, figs 203,204).

Ronald Parkinson"

Materials

Oil paint; Canvas

Techniques

Oil painting

Subjects depicted

Trees

Categories

Paintings

Collection code

PDP