A. S. Hartrick, Strand-on-the-Green from the Surrey Side

Archibald Standish Hartrick (1864-1950) was born in Bangalore and trained at the Slade, the Académie Julian and the Atelier Cormon in Paris. There he befriended Van Gogh, and in 1886 he spent the summer with Gauguin at Pont-Aven. Back in London he drew for The Graphic, co-founded the Senefelder Club of lithographers in 1909, and became a full member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1920. He served as an official war artist in both world wars.

Strand-on-the-Green is the old riverside village at the western tip of Chiswick, just downstream from Kew Bridge. Hartrick looks across the Thames from the Kew bank. Red-roofed cottages and a white gabled house line the far shore, with a sign for ‘Charles Murrell’ and a barge drawn up on the foreshore. Bare trees and willows frame the view, and the wide, pale river fills the middle.

Watercolour over pencil on paper. Signed lower right ‘A S Hartrick’. Titled in ink on the mount ‘The oldest part of Strand-on-the-Green from the Surrey side’. Inscribed in pencil on the backboard ‘A. S. Hartrick R.W.S.’, with a note that the older part of the village has been much damaged by bombs since the drawing was done. The stretch was badly hit in the Second World War. In a dark-painted frame with gilt mouldings.