JOHN HENRY LORIMER R.S.A., R.S.W., R.W.S., R.P. (1856-1936) SWEET ROSES Signed and dated 1888, oil on canvas

(38cm x 28cm (15in x 11in))

Provenance: New Gallery, London, 1888 from where acquired by a London collector The Fine Art Society Ltd, London, October 1965 from where acquired by a Dumfriesshire collector Exhibited: New Gallery, London, 1888, no.249 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1888, no.996 Literature: Anon, 'J. H. Lorimer', The Art Journal, 1895, illustrated in black and white p. 4N May Fenoulhet, John Henry Lorimer, Scottish Artist 1856-1936, A Critical Biography, unpublished thesis, Edinburgh University, 1990, p. 58.

Note: Dr Antonia Laurence Allen has explained that after this painting was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, it was sent for etching so that it could be illustrated in The Art Journal in 1895. In her Edinburgh University unpublished thesis about the artist, May Fenoulhet quotes from a letter of 26 December 1888 written by the work's recent purchaser: 'I only hope that this etching may prove worthy to rank beside the little Picture, which is full of charming beauties, altho' the subject is so very simple a one that few artists would have thought of its selection, or known how to have rendered it so gracefully.' (Fenoulhet, op.cit.). Laurence-Allen had also suggested that the sitters may be Lorimer's older sister Hannah and one of the daughters of his younger sister Janet Alice Chalmers. We are grateful to Dr Antonia Laurence Allen, Regional Curator, National Trust for Scotland and Charlotte Lorimer, contributing authors to ed. Elizabeth Cumming, Reflections: The Light and Life of John Henry Lorimer, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 2021, for their assistance in researching this work.