TAYLOR, WALTER (1860-1943)

"Still Life In Interior" (c.1920)
watercolour
47 x 38cm
signed lower left
*private collection, Sydney
 
Taylor was an importrant English painter, and patron of the Camden Town Group. He trained at the Royal College of Art and exhibited with the London Group and the Monarro Group, with his beautiful post-impressionist watercolours. However, he is best known for his association and patronage of the Camden Town Group, and close friendship with infamous English painter and Jack The Ripper suspect, Walter Sickert, who greatly admired Taylor's work.
Sickert wrote the preface to an exhibition of Taylor’s watercolours at R.E.A. Wilson Gallery, London, in November 1932 in which he praised the artist’s ability to ‘pick off the quintessence of a scene’ as ‘a rare and precious achievement’. He also maintained close relationships with influential artists, Spencer Gore and Lucien Pissarro whom he supported.