`Lambing Time`
Edith Bateson 1918
A vibrant watercolour depicting the onset of Springtime- with lambs and newly shooting willows under a blustery sky - lovely depiction of an English Spring!
Edith Bateson is notable as a late Victorian sculptress, but she was also a fine painter and watercolourist. This work from 1918 is much more modern in feeling and has a rural utopian feel more aligned to the Bloomsbury set and artists such as Duncan grant or Vanessa Bell - perhaps the imminent end of the First World War accounts for the positive atmosphere of the painting!
Very nice period 1920`s gesso frame.

Edith Bateson (act 1891-1937) born Cambridge- Sculptor and painter. Studied at RA schools under Edward Lanteri from 1891 where she won 3 silver medals for sculpture. Bateson was one of a group of women artists who were encouraged to take up Sculpture at this time due to the developement of modelling in clay and then casting in Bronze. Previously sculpture had been thought too physically demanding for women!
According to Susan Beattie,`the dramatic rise of women sculptors to prominence in the 1890s was directly related to the changing image of the art. The cult, not only of the statuette, but of modelling as the sculptors most direct means of self-expression, and the consequent revolution in the bronze founding industry, had deeply undermined the principal argument against women's involvement in sculpture, their inability to cope with the sheer physical effort it required. [Beattie, 195]` See The Victorian Web - Giles's Hero in the Context of Contemporary Women Sculptors for more info. There is a statue by Bateson in the Library of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University.
Later on Bateson seems to have moved on to painting, there is a tenuous link to the Staithes group of painters, and a Miss E.H.Bateson was a member of the the Fylingdales group of Yorkshire coast painters between 1928 and 1935.
Edith Bateson exhibited widely - 4 times at the Royal Academy between 1891-97 and at the International Society of Sculptors 1914-22. Also Walker Gallery 6, RI 2, RBA 4, ROI 3, LS 6 and numerous provincial galleries.