Frank William Warwick Topham (1838-1924) Capri The repair of the nets oil on panel circa 1863

Frank William Warwick Topham (1838-1924) - Capri The repair of the nets oil on panel circa 1863

An air of freshness, a sumptuous light for this oil on panel by Frank William Warwick Topham, an excellent English painter and watercolorist.
It was during his stay with his father around 1863 that this picture was conceived and painted. A beautiful composition that sublimates the life of Italian fishermen in the middle of the 19th century, and makes us dream of these landscapes bathed in light.

Charming painting of a fisherman mending his nets on a Capri beach, signed lower left by Frank William Warwick Topham circa 1863.

Unframed dimensions: Height 38 cm - Length 46 cm.
Dimensions with frame : Height 54 cm - Length 75 cm.

In very good condition, our painting is served by a beautiful carved and patinated wooden frame. Our painting has just been professionally cleaned.

Biography :

Frank William Warwick Topham (1838-1924) is best known as a painter of charming genre scenes in oil and watercolor, particularly those set in Italy. He also painted a number of portraits.

Frank William Warwick Topham was born at 32 Fortress Terrace, Kentish Town, the second of ten children of genre painter Francis William Topham and his wife Mary Anne (née Beckwith).
He studied art under his father from an early age, before entering the schools of the Royal Academy. He continued his apprenticeship in Paris in the studio of the academic painter Charles Gleyre.

From 1860 onwards, Topham exhibited widely in London and the provinces, notably at the Royal Academy of Arts, the British Institution, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Gallery.

Topham enjoyed his father's company and took sketching trips with him to Ireland in 1860, then to Rome and Capri in 1863. Developing a particular love of Italy, he returned there several times and made the inhabitants of Capri the main subject of his paintings. One documented trip was in 1865, when he went to Ravenna with fellow painters E S Lundgren and Frank Dillon.

In 1870, Topham married Helen Lemon, in Horsham, Sussex. She was the daughter of her father's friend Mark Lemon, the first editor of Punch. They settled together at 58 Queen's Road, St John's Wood, but in 1877 moved to Ifield, Prince Arthur Road, Hampstead. They had five daughters and three sons.

In 1879, Topham was elected a member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours. (Six years later, the Institute received its Royal Charter). Then, in 1883, he was elected a member of the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours, just two years after its foundation. (The Institute in turn received its Royal Charter, becoming the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1909).

Around 1890, Topham and his family moved to Coneyhurst, a Tudor manor house in the Surrey village of Ewhurst, which he modernized and enlarged. However, he retained a studio in London, Garden Chambers, 32 Great Ormond Street, and continued to paint and exhibit well into the early years of the twentieth century. He died at home on May 25, 1924, aged 86.

Further reading

Tom Pocock, Topham, and Son. A Family of Artists, London: Burgh House Museum, 1985.

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