Summer by the River

Bond was a prominent member of the Liverpool school of artists in the late 19th century, his contemporaries included William Davis and William Huggins. He was initially apprenticed to Thomas Griffiths, a picture dealer and restorer and lived in Caernarvon before moving to Liverpool. A great admirer of Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, he exhibited in London at the Royal Academy and Royal Society of British Artist but he remained loyal to Liverpool where he exhibited most of his work, being a member of the Liverpool Academy, and more importantly, found his major patrons. Although he is probably best known for his seascapes and marine paintings he painted many landscape subjects and this particular bucolic study of irises growing beside a stream can compared with his 1880s painting of the same size, Fisherman and Spinney, now in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.