Victorian Art in Britain

Alfred William Parsons was a close friend of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and it was in this respect that I first heard of him. Though Tadema lived in Britain for many years, his grasp of English was less than brilliant, and his accent very thick and difficult to understand. Many of his friends were in the habit of giving replies on the basis of his attitude and tone of voice, and, of course, his reputation as a joker was well-known. On one particular occasion a young woman, presuming that he had made a joke laughed. The indignant reaction from the great man was “Vhy for you laugh when I tell you Alfred Parson’s mother has died?”

Alfred Parsons was born in Somerset, and his first job was as a post office clerk, but by the 1870s he was exhibiting at many galleries. In his maturity he became very successful, and spent much of his time at Broadway in Worcestershire, where he built a house. He was an associate of Edward Austin Abbey, also a local resident, and John Singer Sargent was a frequent visitor.

Obituary - The Times January 21, 1920

Death of Mr Parsons, RA

Painter of Flowers and Gardens

We learn with much regret that Mr Alfred Parsons, RA, PRWS, the distinguished artist died on 16 January at his house at Broadway, Worcestershire. By his wish, the public announcement was withheld till the day after the cremation. Some weeks ago he underwent a serious operation, from which it was thought that he was recovering, but a sudden turn for the worse took place. Thus the Royal Watercolour Society has lost within a very short time its ex-president, Sir Ernest Waterlow, and its president. Mr Parsons had filled that office for six years, since his predecessor retired; and the Society loses in him a president whose amiability, keen sense of justice, and business capacity made him invaluable to colleagues. He was 72 years of age, having been born in Beckington, Somerset, in 1847.

As a young man he was for a short time a clerk in the General Post Office; but his turn for painting soon showed itself, and from the early seventies he was a constant exhibitor in different galleries. In 1887 his picture, “When Nature Painted all Things Gay,” was bought by the Chantrey Fund; and by that time he had won for his works in oil and water-colour the admiration of all who care for delicate and beautiful renderings of the bright side of Nature. To this he always adhered; his joy was in gardens and flowers. Indeed, he not only painted gardens, but he designed them with skill and success, as many country houses can bear witness. He was a keen and expert gardener, and a judge at the Chelsea Flower Show. The care which he devoted to the painting of flowers was astonishing; his friends tell of a single narcissus on which he was engaged, on and off for years, trying it in all lights from every angle.

Mr Parsons painted flowers and gardens from a horticultural point of view. That is to say, his pictures give you pleasure because they remind very precisely of beautiful and prosperous gardens you have seen. He had the horticulturist’s eye for flowers, which is not inconsistent with the painter’s eye, though it is, no doubt, with the highest imaginative treatment, such as that of Van Gogh or the great Chinese flower painters.

He painted a flower just as the gardener sees it, and expressed the gardener’s real, and very intense, pleasure in it, and it is the same with gardens. He never painted a garden as Constable, say, paints a larger landscape, for its light and colour, its larger shapes, or the play of the sky upon it. Hence he cannot be called a great landscape painter. A good example of his ordinary landscape is the orchard which was purchased for the Chantrey Bequest and is now in the Tate Gallery. One can take a real pleasure in the blossom, and there is nothing else in the picture to mar that pleasure; but it is not, and does not pretend to be, a great imaginative landscape. It is more like a large Birket Foster than a constable.

His art never changed much through the years, but it did not deteriorate. He was at his best, perhaps in illustration, as in the delicate drawings he made years ago, for Mr Austin Dobson’s poems. He did much illustrating for Harper’s Magazine, and for books. Sometimes he produced a work jointly with his friends, as “Herrick’s Poems” with E A Abbey, and “The Danube” (a record of one of his many long journeys abroad) with F D Millet - these two being the artists with whom he was most closely associated. It was partly to be near Millet ( Francis David Millet 1846-1912, who drowned in the sinking of the Titanic) that he built, with almost excessive care, the house at Broadway where he died. He was never married, but he leaves behind many who loved him.

My Comments

Alfred Parsons was yet another nineteenth century painter who lived into the age of artistic barbarism. In this obituary he escaped the usual strictures of The Times journalist rather lightly.

PHR. 1 December 2005