Myles Birket Foster was an English illustrator and watercolourist who was known for his pastoral scenes and depictions of rural life. His works were popular during the Victorian era and were widely reproduced in books, magazines, and other publications.
Wood-Engraver
Birket Foster's early training under the wood engraver Ebenezer Landells (1808-1860) at the age of sixteen instilled in him the meticulous skill and exacting draughtsmanship required to produce fine illustrations for Punch, The Illustrated London News and other publications. He established his own business in illustration by the time he was 21 but did not start to show his works at the Old Water-Colour Society until 1859. He went on to show over 400 works there and was elected a member in 1862.
From a large and comfortable house called The Hill at Witley in Surrey (decorated by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, Birket Foster concentrated upon idyllic scenes of rural life using a painstaking feathery, stippled technique to soften and blend the hard lines that he has perfected under Landells' tuition. His style, so loaded with wistful nostalgia to our eyes but strongly contemporary for Victorian collectors, was to become hugely popular.
The children in Birket Foster's pictures were rarely depicted idle but always seem happy in their labours, despite the intensive work required to run and feed a rural home during the worsening agricultural depression of the 1870's. The Factory Act of 1833 had exempted children only from labour in factories but they were still expected to work hard in the rural environment. W. Cooke Taylor wrote in Factories and the Factory System (1844) that "there are no tasks imposed on young persons in factories that are anything near so laborious as hand-weeding corn, hay-making, stone-picking, potato-picking or bean-chopping."
Here, the more pleasurable pursuits of tending sheep bestow an atmosphere of quiet satisfaction upon the scene and Birket Foster's knack for capturing happy contentment is fully apparent.
SPRING ON A SURREY COMMON, Signed with monogram.
Bought for £13,450, 16th January 2015 at Lawrences Auctioneers, Crewkerne.
Birket Foster later charged a guinea to authenticate his own work and myriad fakes are still commonly found today. They are sometimes quite accomplished but are more routinely guilty of imitating a Birket Foster composition without capturing the detail or the understated richness of colour. However, when Birket Foster excelled himself and managed to retain his precision across a large sheet of paper such as this, his skills are both impressive and instantly distinctive.
Today, he is remembered as one of the leading watercolourists of his time, and his works continue to be admired for their beauty and their ability to capture the essence of a bygone era.