William Mellor Art

Antique 19th century English fishing vessels In the English Channel William Henry Williamson was a gifted, London painter of coastal scenes, ...

A wonderful example of the rare and intricate work of John Cantiloe Joy (1806-1866) Shipping off the Norfolk coast with figures on the shore Watercolour over traces of pencil 6½ x 1...

A very well-painted Dutch 19th century marine scene. The small boat is full of men who are rowing hard to get to the larger vessels, possibly to either take goods on or off the large...

John Frederick Herring Junior, Antique 19th century English, Cart Horses in a farmyard landscape with cottage. John Frederick Herring Jnr. was a painter of sporting and animal subjects in oil and watercolor. His style was very similar to that of his father, John Frederick Herring Snr...

Late 19th/early 20th century oil on canvas painting in the manner of Abraham Hulk the Younger (1851-1922), this painting was acquired by Saltire Gallerie with a larger painting signed by Hulk the Younger, (just SOLD). Presented in a period decorative gilt frame, the painting is of a cottage in a woodland with cattle by a pond, a little black dog and man and a woman standing by. In the distance is a glimpse of a river and grasses, framed by trees and an overcast sky. Hulk is renowned for his treatment of the changing season from summer to autumn, and the golden leaves and fading greens in this painting suggest this changing time of year. Hulk is the son of a well known Dutch maritime...

William Crouch (active 1817-1850) A view of a country estate in the mountains Watercolour 3 x 4½ 8¼ x 9¼ inches with frame William Crouch was a prolif...

Alfred W Cooper, 19th Century Waiting by the weir Signed with initials Watercolour with touches of gouache 6¾ x 9¾ inches 12 x 16 inches with the frame A delightful Victorian scene...

Late 19th century Scottish Highland Lock landscape, with Cattle watering E.Mulready was almost certainly a pseudo name for William Langley a well known English painter of landscapes...

Early 20th Century English Autumn river landscape with cows drinking from a stream. Abraham Hulk Junior was born in the Netherlands in 1851 to ren...

A very attractive rural scene of a fisherman and his dog on a riverbank, in very good colour and an appealing composition. Claude Hayes (1852-1922) A fisherman and his dog by a riverbank Signed Watercolour with touches of pencil 6½ x 10 inches, image only 13 x 16 inches with the frame Claude Hayes was a Dublin born painter who to avoid his father's wish to make a businessman of him ran away to sea and served on the Golden Fleece, one of the transports used in the Abyssinian expedition of 1867-68, and also spent a year in the United States. Returning to London, he studied art at Heatherley's and the Royal Academy Schools, and then in Antwerp, under Charles Verlat. He worked in Hampshire with James Aumonier and also in Surrey with William Charles Estall, whose sister he married. Hayes exhibited widely in London and provincial centres, and was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1886, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1883, and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, 1902. He also showed at the RA, RBSA, Brook Street Art Gallery, Dudley Gallery, FAS, GI, Grosvenor Gallery, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, MAFA, RBA, RHA, Ridley Art Club, RSW and Walker's Gallery, London. In 1912, Claude Hayes represented England at the Venice Biennale. His work is in various public collections in England and Ireland including the Ulster Museum, Museums Sheffield, Torre Abbey Museum and the Leeds City Art Gallery. His father was the artist Edwin Hayes.

A really charming study of a blacksmith puffing on a clay pipe at the forge door. Thomas Charles Leeson Rowbotham Junr (1823-1875) Village Blacksmith Patterdale, Aug 1848 Signed, in...

The Great Fire of London in September 1666 was one of the greatest disasters in the city’s history. The City, with its wooden houses crowded together in narrow streets, was a natural fire risk, and predictions that London would burn down became a shocking reality. The fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane, an area near the Thames teeming with warehouses and shops full of flammable materials, such as timber, oil, coal, pitch and turpentine. Inevitably the fire spread rapidly from this area into the City. Our painting depicts the impact of the fire on those who were caught in it and creates a very dramatic impression of what the fire was like. Closer inspection reveals a scene of chaos and panic with people running out of the gates. It shows Cripplegate in the north of the City, with St Giles without Cripplegate to its left, in flames (on the site of the present day Barbican). The painting probably represents the fire on the night of Tuesday 4 September, when four-fifths of the City was burning at once, including St Paul's Cathedral. Old St Paul’s can be seen to the right of the canvas, the medieval church with its thick stone walls, was considered a place of safety, but the building was covered in wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of being restored by the then little known architect, Christopher Wren and caught fire. Our painting seems to depict a specific moment on the Tuesday night when the lead on St Paul’s caught fire and, as the diarist John Evelyn described: ‘the stones of Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream and the very pavements glowing with the firey redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.’ Although the loss of life was minimal, some accounts record only sixteen perished, the magnitude of the property loss was shocking – some four hundred and thirty acres, about eighty per cent of the City proper was destroyed, including over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and fifty-two Guild Halls. Thousands were homeless and financially ruined. The Great Fire, and the subsequent fire of 1676, which destroyed over six hundred houses south of the Thames, changed the appearance of London forever. The one constructive outcome of the Great Fire was that the plague, which had devastated the population of London since 1665, diminished greatly, due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the blaze. The fire was widely reported in eyewitness accounts, newspapers, letters and diaries. Samuel Pepys recorded climbing the steeple of Barking Church from which he viewed the destroyed City: ‘the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw.’ There was an official enquiry into the causes of the fire, petitions to the King and Lord Mayor to rebuild, new legislation and building Acts. Naturally, the fire became a dramatic and extremely popular subject for painters and engravers. A group of works relatively closely related to the present picture have been traditionally ascribed to Jan Griffier...