Full screenZoom

Edward Wilkins Waite1854 - 1924

The Reed-Cutter

Stock code: S4693
Signed
Oil on Canvas
20 x 30 ins / 51 x 76.2 cms
Price category: B: £5,000 - £10,000

Full screenView framed painting

Edward Wilkins Waite RBA was born at Leatherhead in Surrey on the 14th April 1854, the son of a dissenting minister the Rev. Edward Waite, MA, and his wife Cleopha Julia (nee Dukes). He was the second in a family of six sons and two daughters. He was born into an artistic tradition; his grandfather, William Watkin Waite, was a miniaturist, and his father an amateur watercolour painter. Three of his brothers became artists and two musicians. Waite was an amateur musician himself, playing the violin. He is recorded in later years as conducting an orchestra at Woolhampton.

Waite was educated at Mansion House Grammar School, Leatherhead. In 1874 he went to Ontario, Canada and worked for a while as a lumberjack, a sketch book from this journey survives. Waite seems to have taken up painting seriously on his return. In 1878 he exhibited two pictures at the Royal Academy in London and again two in 1880. Thereafter, with only eight breaks, he exhibited at the Royal Academy every year until 1919. From the late 1880's Waite exhibited his work extensively, for example in 1893, in which year he became a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, he exhibited some 30 works in over twenty separate places.

Exhibited : Royal Academy, the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours, the Royal Society of British Artists and the New Gallery in London, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Galleries in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Dublin, Leeds, Manchester, Oldham and Southport.