Garnet Ruskin Wolseley

Wolseley was the son of a vicar at Dutton Basset in Bedfordshire. On his father's side he was related to Field-Marshall Lord Wolseley and his mother was apparently related to John Ruskin. His formative art studies were at Hubert von Herkomer’s school at Bushey where he won a scholarship to continue his studies at the Slade School of Art. Under the tutelage of Henry Tonks and Fred Brown, Wolseley prospered and won a gold medal for his studies. In 1908, when he was only twenty-four, he moved to Newlyn in Cornwall, to join the influential group of artists who made their home and reputations there. He became a much-liked figure in the Newlyn art colony and served on the committee of the Newlyn Society of Artists until 1913. He became particularly close to Harold and Laura Knight who had only recently arrived on the Cornish coast after moving there from Staithes. He posed for the figure of the butler in Laura’s Afternoon Tea of 1910 - the setting was Wolseley's own drawing room in Newlyn. Wolseley and the Knights painted in a similar Impressionistic style and chose comparable subjects of the carefree life of the local children amid the brilliant light that Newlyn was so famous for. Picking Blossom over Mount’s Bay is typical of the charming subjects that Wolseley chose to paint in Newlyn and demonstrates the influence of Laura Knight's work in particular. The shimmering white of the girls' dresses and the plentiful blossom is contrasted with the deep azure-blue of the sea beneath the summer sun.

Wolseley was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, his pictures usually focused on the landscape of Newlyn and the nearby Lamorna Valley, which offered almost inexhaustible places to paint. During WWI he continued to paint whilst serving in the Navy, producing many watercolours of grand ships and aircraft whilst stationed abroad. When the war ended, Wolseley did not return to Cornwall but moved to London to pursue acclaim as one of the most fashionable portraitists in Chelsea. However, the bustle of London did not suit his personality and he moved to Sussex to continue painting and to nurture a successful career as an archaeologist – he wrote many papers on nearby Iron Age sites and presented a collection of Celtic pottery vessels that he had unearthed, to the British Museum. Later Wolseley moved to Snowdonia to paint the Welsh landscape but following the death of his wife, he moved to Nettlecombe in Somerset.