- ‘The Sands of Dee, Cheshire’

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Oil on canvas
20″ X 24″
Signed bottom centre
Inscribed with title on stretcher
Framed

This painting is likely to date from 1916 when Birch was the house guest of Percy Eccles at Caldy Manor in the Wirral. Birch’s diary entry for 8 December recalls that he … ‘had a strenuous day … I think I have done a real masterpiece … certainly the best thing I’ve done since I came here. It is a sketch overlooking the Dee, a sunset effect with the channels reflecting the sky and a suggestion of a town in the middle distance. I did make paint fly, and no mistake!’

Percy Eccles was a great admirer of Birch’s work and it seems probable that he bought the painting from the artist. The subsequent provenance is the London dealership Frost and Reed and an auction at Christie’s King Street as their old stencil mark is on the stretcher. Some time thereafter it is understood that the painting formed part of the collection of Lord Sheppard, Bishop of Liverpool and former England cricketer who lived with his wife in West Kirby and whose property enjoyed views not dissimilar to that of the painting’s subject.

 

Out of stock

Oil on canvas
20″ X 24″
Signed bottom centre
Inscribed with title on stretcher
Framed

This painting is likely to date from 1916 when Birch was the house guest of Percy Eccles at Caldy Manor in the Wirral. Birch’s diary entry for 8 December recalls that he … ‘had a strenuous day … I think I have done a real masterpiece … certainly the best thing I’ve done since I came here. It is a sketch overlooking the Dee, a sunset effect with the channels reflecting the sky and a suggestion of a town in the middle distance. I did make paint fly, and no mistake!’

Percy Eccles was a great admirer of Birch’s work and it seems probable that he bought the painting from the artist. The subsequent provenance is the London dealership Frost and Reed and an auction at Christie’s King Street as their old stencil mark is on the stretcher. Some time thereafter it is understood that the painting formed part of the collection of Lord Sheppard, Bishop of Liverpool and former England cricketer who lived with his wife in West Kirby and whose property enjoyed views not dissimilar to that of the painting’s subject.