Artist     Frederick Appleyard
Title      Paddlers
Date      1960's
object    Painting
Media    oil
Size       29 x 40.5cm
Ref         352

Purchased in RWA exhibition in 1963

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Paddlers
Fred Appleyard was a British landscape artist, born in Middlesbrough, northern England in September 1874.

He studied at Scarborough School of Art under Albert Strange, and at the Royal College of Art and then the Royal Academy Schools in London where he was awarded the Turner Gold Medal and three scholarships in painting. In 1903 he completed several mural decorations for the Royal Academy refreshment rooms and further murals in Nottingham General Hospital and Pickering Church.

A champion of British impressionism, he is known for his scenes depicting families at rest and play in a variety of outdoor settings – woodland glades, amidst ruins, or – as in this picture from the RWA Collection – on an empty beach. He employed a particularly sensitive technique which required him to dapple the paint onto the surface, an approach that was ideally suited to capturing sporadic sunlight filtered through foliage or across expanses of sand. Typical of his ability to capture children at play amidst shallow pools, is his painting ‘Shaded Water’ acquired by the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath.

During his lifetime Appleyard exhibited his work widely, showing regularly in London where he had over forty works shown at the Royal Academy. He was also a regular exhibitor at the Royal West of England Academy and was elected a member in 1926. In addition to work in British collections in Liverpool and Glasgow, he is represented in Tate Britain by a single oil painting - "The Secret" – which was a Chantry Bequest purchase from the Royal Academy annual exhibition of 1915.

After the Great War, 1914-1918, Appleyard settled in the Hampshire village of Itchen Stoke where he stayed for almost fifty years. Focused exclusively on his paintingt, he is reputed to have covered his living expenses by letting his house to visiting anglers and eventually selling his Turner Gold Medal to pay for an electricity connection to his home. He later lived at Alresford, Hampshire, and died there on 22 February 1963.

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