I noticed a rather grubby looking but well framed oil painting just as travel restrictions started to be applied which made it difficult to handle it in person. So I was more than relieved to find that it was in excellent condition when I eventually got to see it.
The vendors chosen auctioneers had been so lazy as to not even give it a wipe, and thus presenting it in a terrible state. You could hardly see the painting through the muck on the glass. Which it seems may have been to my benefit. The same lazy auctioneers that don't even wrap a parcel up for you, or even supply bubble wrap.
There can't be another profession where they pluck 25% from the vendors and 25% from the buyer and then treat both with contempt.
But this seems to my advantage in this case.
The painting was by David Woodlock.
His work is held in many institutions. I gave it a clean and it came up looking as bright as a bell.
Labelled several times on the back. One label read Alderman Harford and another label reads WOODLOCK EXHIBITION Walker Art Gallery 1929 and a owners name.
David Woodlock (1842-1929) was a key figure in the development of a distinct school of Liverpool painters, being a founder member, and later the President, of the Liver Sketching Club, (still going today) and also a member of the Liverpool Academy of Arts.
David Woodlock was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, the son of John Woodlock. Moving to Liverpool at the age of twelve, he was apprenticed as a drapers. He showed great artistic promise and began to study at the schools of the Liverpool Academy of Arts. He studied under John Finnie, possibly in the evenings, while he still worked as a draper’s assistant. In 1871 he exhibited at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition, which was held at the Walker Art Gallery. He was living at 28 Almond Street, as the head of the household, with his widowed father, John, who was working as a coal dealer, his brother, Thomas and sister Margaret.
Woodlock helped found the Liver Sketching Club in 1872.
Marrying Marion Theresa Martin that year.
Becoming a member of the Liverpool Academy of Arts.
He
exhibited in London in 1880, showing at the Royal Academy of Arts
from 1888. Also exhibiting at the Royal Institute of Painters in
Water Colours, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the Royal
Scottish Academy.
He
exhibited sixteen works at the Royal Academy between 1888 and 1904.
During the late 1880s, Woodlock was living in Sheffield with his wife and four children, and working as a ‘hosier and haberdasher’. In his spare time, he studied at St George’s Museum, Walkley, which had been founded by John Ruskin for the education of local workers.
Having returned to Liverpool by the early 1890s, Woodlock travelled to Venice and North Africa in 1894. He would later visit Holland.
He became President of the Liver Sketching Club in 1897.
In the early twentieth century, he lived in Warwickshire, where he painted some of his most characteristic images of country life with half-timbered cottages set in flower-filled gardens.
Back in Liverpool, he took a studio at Canning Chambers, 2 South Street, Liverpool. In 1911, he was living at 46 Nicander Road, Toxteth Park, Liverpool, with his wife and three younger adult children, Winifred, Evangeline and Charles.
At the time of his death on 4 December 1929, David Woodlock was living at no 2 Voelas Street High Park Liverpool.
So I contacted the Walker Art Gallery and Alex Patterson kindly gave me confirmation that it was exhibited at The Walker Art Gallery in 1929 as Part of The Autumn Exhibition showing contemporary artists. He had exhibited widely in the Autumn Exhibitions from the galleries conception in 1871.
This picture was shown there upon his death perhaps in memory to him.
They have two further oil paintings and four water colours by him in their collection.
None of which are currently on display.
Signed in oil in the lower right corner.
It is a portrait of Alderman Harford who was the brother of The Lord Mayor of Liverpool. Looking ever so Bohemian in his wide brimmed hat with a red plume and sporting a tasseled necktie. Is that a cape he's wearing?
He could almost be mistaken for a painter himself.
It looks to me to be painted during that period we now call The Arts and Crafts. Possibly Victorian maybe Edwardian,
I was so pleased that the auctioneers showed it little respect because maybe I would not have been able to afford it if they did.
It now, thankfully resides with me. Where it is now cherished. A piece of art history.
I have no desire to sell it at present
His portrait of Cardinal John Henry Newman 1988 held in the National Gallery of Ireland was purchased 1987.
https://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/list.php?m=a&s=tu&aid=1507
http://www.nwlh.org.uk/?q=node/116
Mary Bennett, Merseyside, Painters, People & Places: Text, Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, 1978, Page 235
