Walter Frederick Osborne, R.H.A. 1859-1903

Like many artists of his generation Walter Osborne was swept along by the enthusiasm for plein-air naturalism. Increasingly dominant in the Paris Salon, and visible in its most extreme form in the work of the Impressionists, painting ‘on the motif’ enjoyed widespread approval in the 1880s. Recording lived experience and being ‘of one’s time’ gave moral and intellectual force to this universal tendency. Jules Bastien-Lepage, the leading French exponent of naturalistic representation preached that young painters should find their unique ‘corner of the world’ and devote themselves to recording it. In Britain and Ireland where reformers focussed upon the regeneration of rural life, the cottage and its immediate surroundings, closely allied to the allotment movement, epitomized an ideal social microcosm. It was the modern equivalent of the romantic Rossettian rose bower. Nevertheless, Osborne’s treatment of the rustic garden between 1887 and 1889 was backed by powerful attitudes and beliefs, derived from his student years in Belgium and France.

His close friendships formed in Antwerp and Brittany, persuaded Osborne to remain in England during the second half of the 1880s. As yet, Osborne’s companions Edward Stott, Nathaniel Hill and Blandford Fletcher, have not been closely studied, nevertheless Jeanne Sheehy has mapped his movements during these years, showing that at different times, he worked in Walsberswick, the Vale of Evesham, Newbury, Uffington, Rye, Hastings and other places. It is difficult without close regard to local building styles, to attach particular pictures to these locations precisely. Conditioned in part by the enormous success of Helen Allingham’s watercolours, these artists hoped to apply continental practices to a traditional picturesque subject. Where Allingham was sentimental, they were objective, in the manner of Bastien-Lepage. This was evident even before their return to Britain, in Stott’s A French Kitchen Garden (Sheffield City Art Galleries), Fletcher’s A Kitchen Garden in November, Quimperlé and Osborne’s Apple Gathering, Quimperlé, (both National Gallery of Ireland), all three of which were painted in 1883.

When he returned to England in 1884, Osborne resumed these preoccupations and during the next five years sought his arcadian ‘corner’. Like the Dutch masters, he was supremely sensitive to the placing of roof lines, windows and doorways. Figures often act as reference points in the task of spatial mapping and in the present example the child watering flowers, as well as being a rural innocent, is essential to the design. Her strong presence contrasts with that of the old retainer upstaged by a glorious clump of lilies in A Cottage Garden, (fig.1). Both pictures are likely to have been painted around 1887-8 when the painter was working at Newbury or Uffington. Osborne favoured garden views in which flower-beds, juxtaposed with gable walls and roof apexes were ranged to the left, parallel to the picture plane and in the present case, the eye is drawn from figure to flowers, which frame the rear entrance to the cottage - a dark rectangle, and the focal point of the composition.

This format had been established early on in Osborne’s career and it distinguishes his work from Fletcher’s more conventional Allingham-inspired pictures such A Farm Garden, Worcestershire (1888, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).

It also anticipates works such as George Clausen’s imposing canvas, The Girl at the Gate, 1889 (Tate Britain). Osborne was an early Clausen admirer and like him, was developing a more personal style, which accepted some of the innovations of the French Impressionists. The use of sunlight falling on the girl’s left shoulder and casting the flowers into shadow, with touches of crimson on emerald, points to the growing flexibility in Osborne’s handling – at the same time accentuating the restorative natural beauty which was an essential part of garden lore. 

Kenneth McConkey