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Thomas Edwin Mostyn
British, 1864-1930
A Walk Through the Forest
Oil on Canvas
20 by 27 in, w/ frame 28 by 35 in
Signed Mostyn lower right

Inventory Number: 01331
1800-1899 European Landscape Period 1800-1899 19th Century

See Artist Bio below.


Thomas Edwin Mostyn
British, 1864-1930

He was a figure painter, portrait painter and landscape painter whose earlier work had a tendency to the Symbolist.  He was born into a Manchester family though his birthplace was Liverpool, and after an apprenticeship to a firm of lithographers, studied at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, and then at the Bushey school of Herkomer as a student of Hubert von Herkomer.  He later lived in St John's Wood, and Torbay in Devon, with which he is particularly associated.

He exhibited 14 works at the Royal Academy, commencing in 1891.  He exhibited in Paris at the Salon of the Societe des Artistes Francais, winning a medal in 1902.  He also exhibited at the Salon of Independent Artists and the British Watercolor Society.  He was a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil-Colors, the Royal Cambrian Academy, and the Royal West of England Academy. 

Among his more Pre-Raphaelite works are a Blessed Damozel from a poem by Rossetti, and Dreamers.  With examples of his work in many private and public collections it is particularly the atmospheric landscapes which are most highly regarded today.  He concentrated on a series of enchanted garden scenes for which he would become best known.  By piling thick layers of intensely bright colored pigment onto the canvas with a palette knife, he overwhelmed the viewer with a barrage of visual stimuli in an effort to evoke their imagination.  Mostyn was not content to soften down facts and realities by veiling them in an atmosphere of subtle illusion, like so many of the Impressionists did.  Reality became of small importance to the artist's scheme.  Instead he set out to create a world of his own, in which romance was the dominant note.  Such an example is in this painting with the sunlight radiating off the lake in the distance and the effects of the surrounding flowers amongst the wooded landscaped.

Museums: Bristol; Liverpool; Rochdale Art Gallery; Laing Art Gallery; Manchester Art Gallery; Edinburgh; Tate Museum, London; Royal Academy, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh

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