Philip Wilson Steer

Catalogue entry

N03193 RICHMOND CASTLE 1903

Inscr. ‘P W Steer 1903’ b.r.
Canvas, 30 1/4×40 1/4 (77×102·5).
Presented by Sir Michael Sadler through the National Art-Collections Fund 1917.
Coll: Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe), purchased from the N.E.A.C. 1903, sold by him to the Carfax Gallery, where purchased by Sir Michael Sadler 1909.
Exh: N.E.A.C., November–December 1903 (118); Twenty Years of British Art, 1890–1910, Whitechapel Art Gallery, May–June 1910 (538); Tate Gallery, April–July 1929 (184); National Gallery, June–August 1943 (64).
Lit: MacColl in Artwork, No.17, 1929, p.21 (where incorrectly dated 1904); MacColl, 1945, pp.78, 205, repr. pl.27a.
Repr: Burlington Magazine, XVII, 1910, p.220; N.A.C.F. Report 1917, 1918, facing p.15; Ironside, 1943, pl.40.

MacColl in 1945 wrote (op. cit., p.78) of Steer's second visit to Richmond, Yorkshire: ‘We had rooms looking over the market place and church. The Three [i.e. William Coles, Fred Brown and Steer] were on the other side of the river, where Steer had converted a disused chapel into a studio, from the vantage-point and shelter of whose high steps he painted the stormy “Richmond Castle”, at the Tate, and “The Shower” in Blackwell's collection. Tonks was elsewhere in the town. It was a dour and wet season. The Three went forth carrying, as well as their other tackle, little platforms to keep their feet dry, for Steer had not yet given up painting a big canvas in the open.’ Steer paid his first visit to Richmond in 1895, and a view of the castle seen through the trees is now in the Rochdale Art Gallery. Other versions of the subject are listed by MacColl.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II

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