Signed Watercolour of a Portrait of a Woman by John Absolon 1815-1895

Signed Watercolour of a Portrait of a Woman by John Absolon 1815-1895. Picturing a lady with flowers in her hair.
Signed to the lower left.

Absolon was born in Lambeth London in May 1815. He was described in a profile in The Art Journal as "one among many artists who have raised themselves by energy and perseverance alone to a good position in their profession and in society". By the age of 15 he was earning a living as a portrait painter, he showed two oil paintings on religious subjects at the British Institution in 1837, but dissatisfied with the direction of his work, left for Paris the next year, accompanied by his wife. From 1839 he exhibited at the New Watercolour Society, of which he had become a member before his departure for France. He resigned from the society in 1858 to concentrate on oil painting, and showed several works at the Royal Academy, but returned to it in 1861.(2)

In 1843 he was commissioned to produce illustrations for an edition of Isaac Walton's Compleat Angler James Dafforne, writing in the Art Journal, said of Absolon: There are few figure painters whose works show a greater variety of subject than Mr. Absolon's; his style of treatment is natural and unaffected, his pencilling free yet careful, and his colouring brilliant without exaggeration, or a straining after effect by violent contrasts.

Absolon was also a favourite of Queen Victoria, who organised performances of Shakespeare's plays at Windsor with Absolon providing the painted scenery. He exhibited widely, including at the Royal Academy and the New Watercolour Society, of which he became a member, as well as at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolors, Royal Institute of Oil Painters and Royal Society of British Artists. Examples of Absolon's figure studies can be seen in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.