Watercolour of the Month

Old Clopton Bridge, Stratford-on-Avon
1919
By William Wells Quatremain (1857 to 1930)
Watercolour on paper

Why did this fine artist stay all his life at Stratford?

Why we acquired this work
Purchased in June 1962. One of a series of lovely watercolours that The Herbert acquired for the Warwickshire Watercolours Collection in the 1960s.

The subject
The bridge, which has fourteen arches, was built about 1490. It is named after Sir Richard Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, who arranged the finance for it to be built. It still carries the main road over the River Avon.

The artist
William Wells Quatremain (also spelled Quatremaine) was born in 1857 at Gypsy Hill, Upper Norwood, London. On the death of his father (an amateur painter) he moved in 1867 with his mother (a drawing master) to Stratford on Avon to be near her sister's family. William is first mentioned in the local paper there in 1884. He married in 1895.

Views of Stratford by him were commissioned in 1907 from him and published in a popular booklet entitled 'Shakespeare's Stratford-on-Avon' by J. Salmon, Art Printer, Sevenoaks. He exhibited nine paintings at the Royal Society of Birmingham Artists, between 1894 and 1907. He also exhibited annually at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford until 1926. Frances Countess of Warwick in 1911 commissioned 24 views of Warwick Castle from him. People remembered that he had a bicycle adapted to carry his paintbox, easel and stool.

Related works
Other works collected in the 1960s as part of the Warwickshire Watercolours Collection:

• Roe: The River at Warwick around 1800 (about April 1962)
• Samuel Rayner: Interior of the Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick (May 1962)
• Wood, Lewis John Wood: Ruins of the Banqueting Hall, Kenilworth Castle (August 1963)
• Leonard Squirrell: Henley in Arden (October 1963)
• Thomas Baker: watercolours of Ashow and Lillington (November 1963)

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