John SHERRIN
(London 1819 - Ramsgate 1896)
Still Life of a Bird’s Nest and Primroses
Sold
Watercolour, with touches of white heightening.
Signed JSherrin at the lower left.
153 x 189 mm. (6 x 7 3/8 in.) [image]
165 x 207 mm. (6 1/2 x 8 1/8 in.) [sheet]
Signed JSherrin at the lower left.
153 x 189 mm. (6 x 7 3/8 in.) [image]
165 x 207 mm. (6 1/2 x 8 1/8 in.) [sheet]
John Sherrin’s technical abilities as a watercolourist are readily evident in the present sheet. With its use of a stippling technique applied with minute brushstrokes, the drawing owes much to the example of his teacher William Henry Hunt, who was known as ‘Bird’s Nest’ Hunt; a sobriquet also attached to the school of artists, like Sherrin, who painted the same types of subjects. Such direct observation from nature is characteristic of Sherrin’s work, and reflects the particular influence of the ideas of John Ruskin, who was also taught by Hunt.
One of the few known pupils of William Henry Hunt, from whom he adopted a lifelong interest in the depiction of bird’s nests as a still life subject, John Sherrin began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1859. He eventually exhibited some forty works at the R.A., up to 1894, as well as a further 150 drawings at the New Water-Colour Society, which he joined as an associate member in 1866. He became a member of the Royal institute in 1879. As an artist, Sherrin worked mainly in watercolour and specialized in still life and bird subjects. He became a member of the Royal Institute in 1879, and his works are today in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum in London, the Manchester City Art Gallery, the Aberdeen Art Gallery, the Ulster Museum, and elsewhere.
Provenance
Richard Haworth, Blackburn
Audrey Pearce, Surrey, in 1972 (according to an inscription on the old backing board).