SERENIDAD || Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Henry Ryland (British painter, decorator and designer) 1856 - 1924
Serenity, ca. 1890
watercolour on paper laid down on board
54 x 77 cm. (21.3 x 30.3 in.)
signed lower left 
private collection

Henry Ryland was a painter, watercolourist, decorator and designer whose style successfully mixed the themes of the Neo-classical and Pre-Raphaelite movements. His favourite subject being young women in classical draperies on marble terraces. Born in Bedfordshire, Henry Ryland was a pupil of Benjamin Constant and later Gustave Boulanger at the Academy Julian in Paris. Influenced by Puvis de Chavanne, Alma-Tadema and the Pre-Raphaelites, Ryland's highly finished paintings which he exhibited frequently at the Royal Academy, The New Gallery and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour establish him as of the foremost of the neo-classical painters working in watercolour. He was also a renowned illustrator, his woodcuts used as headers and footers in the English Illustrated Magazine in the 1880s and 1890s and he often designed for other media, including stained glass windows.

Although he did paint in oils, he specialized in highly finished watercolour paintings containing images of young women in classical draperies on marble terraces. Subjects of this type were popularized by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Albert Moore and J. W. Godward. Unlike Moore he rarely painted nudes. His watercolours were widely reproduced as prints.