Myles Birket Foster, R.W.S. 1825-1899

Of all Birket Foster's subjects the most charming are those which depict pastoral scenes of children and young women, involved in outdoor activities such as picking flowers and berries, reading in the shadow of trees or paddling in streams as in the present picture. These rustic idylls are the epitome of Englishness in which the glory of the seasons are celebrated in the jolly dispositions of the exuberant little children, dressed in a way which is perfectly in keeping with the picturesque qualities of his woodland and pastoral scenes. The skies are always blue, the riverbanks bejewelled with wild flowers and the children happy and decorous and there are never rain clouds threatening to ruin the perfection of the blue skies above. The idyllic charm of Birket Foster's watercolours of this type, was described by Marcus Huish as 'gentle art' and he continued to described the countryside as portayed by Foster, 'we find his fields alive with nibbling flocks, his lanes with the slowly moving wain, his streams with the solid angler, and his woods with Horace's pensive muser... although he sometimes paints the rushing torrent... he much prefers the infant stream and - "Willows grey close crowding o'er the brook" (Marcus B. Huish, Birket Foster; His Life and Work, The Art Annual, 1890, pg.19)