Bernard Walter Evans

Bernard Walter Evans (26 December 1843 – 26 February 1922) was a British landscape painter and watercolourist in the Romantic style, working mainly in Birmingham, Wales, London, Cannes and the North Riding of Yorkshire. Because he used a "heavy, cumbrous" horse-drawn van to reach remote sites in Yorkshire, his nickname there was Van Evans, and he was recognisable with his wideawake hat, pipe and neckerchief. He was known for his arduous days of painting in the hard Yorkshire winters, with frozen water pots, little food, and only a paraffin stove to warm his hands.

Evans was the son of an engraver, and four of his siblings were artists. He began his apprenticeship at seven years old with Samuel Lines. He studied under George Wallis at the Birmingham School of Art and then with Edward Watson at the School of Landscape Art. He married Mary Ann Eliza Hollyer, sister of Frederick Hollyer, and one of his cousins was George Eliot. Evans was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and the Savage Club, and he was for many years a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.

Background Bernard Walter Evans was born in Queen Street, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire England, on 26 December 1843.

At St Luke's Church, Kentish Town, on 2 August 1870 Evans married Mary Ann Eliza Hollyer (Bloomsbury c.1832 – Knaresborough 1902), to which they moved in the 1890s, Evans died at the home of his niece, in Bedford Park, London, on 26 February 1922,

Training and career

Evans started studying art under Samuel Lines in Birmingham when he was seven years old, and there he "made copies of landscapes and ruins from the drawings of that artist". He then studied under George Wallis at Birmingham School of Art, and from the age of nineteen in 1863 he studied under Edward Watson (died c.1920) at his School of Landscape Art. From 1887 until his death he was a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. He also exhibited at the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art where he was one of the first 31 founder members, He also used his Harrogate studio to exhibit his recent works; it was open to the public when he was at home. In July 1898, two large paintings in his studio were named in the Pateley Bridge and Nidderdale Herald as: Cannes From Le Grand Pin and Gorge of the Saut de Loup. Also in the studio were: On the Road to the Observatoire, Cannes, Knaresborough From the Castle Yard, The River Nidd Below Chappie Dam, Grasse From Above the Grand Hotel, The Valley of Desolation, Wharfedale, Fountains Abbey and other scenes and sketches.

Collections At the time of Evans' death he had works in a number of permanent collections. Birmingham Art Gallery. Evans' landscape The Valley of the Trent was still hanging in Birmingham Art Gallery in 1932. Sydney and Melbourne art galleries in Australia. British Museum (South Kensington): Bolton Abbey, print, (1887). and Knaresborough (undated). Lytham St Anne's Art Collection: Bolton Abbey from the Soay (undated). Royal Collection Trust: Whitby Abbey. (c.1887).

Reviews The following reviews give an idea of how Evans was seen during his own era.

In Evans' studio in Cannes in 1896, the Cannes Gazette, copied in the Knaresborough Post, noted the following. "Mr Evans gives us this year a more important collection of his works than he has yet exhibited at Cannes". The Gorges of the Loup was painted with "great strength and fidelity". Saint-Césaire was "another important work". Antibes was "most vividly depicted", and The Port of Cannes was a "very remarkable work".

French landscapes by B. W. Evans (undated), featuring blue seas "The art of Bernard Evans had a peculiar distinction. It might be styled and mannered, but it was in a fine manner, recalling the classicism of such water-colour artists as Barrett and Danby, and through them reaching back to Richard Wilson and still further, to Claude. Bernard Evans always seemed most at home in such subjects as were afforded by the Italian Riviera, with its great stretches of blue sea and its serried ranks of olive trees, giving a sort of stately formality to the scene. One can imagine him following in the steps of the great artists who delighted in the somewhat theatrical grandeur of Frascati, in the broad expanses of the Roman Campagna. He did some work in the Yorkshire Dales, but it was not among his happiest; one felt that his art was too aristocratic to unbend to the homeliness of an English landscape, and one could never imagine him at his ease in the simple pastoral landscapes of Constable's Country. As one who had associations with the West Riding, it is satisfactory to know that among the recent acquisitions of the Leeds Gallery is a fine example of his work, one of the highly elaborated, finely wrought landscapes that were characteristic of him, a worthy memorial of a distinguished artist." (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 28 February 1933) "His pleasant pictures were panoramic rather than intimate, clear-eyed, unvexed by thought – hence their temporary popularity." (Acton Gazette, 3 March 1922)