Dewhurst, Winford

Winford Dewhurst was born in Manchester in 1864. ^[3] Educated at home with a tutor, and later at Mintolm College. Preparing for the legal profession, he showed artistic talent and decided to pursue a career as an artist after some of his drawings were published in various magazines.

He received his art education in France at the School of Fine Arts in Paris , where he was a student of the famous French painter Jean-Leon Gerome . In his work, Dewhurst was strongly influenced by the Impressionists. For the first time he encountered impressionism in the work of Emil Klaus in Bradford . Claude Monet became his main mentor.

Claude Monet Winford Dewhurst dedicated his work on French impressionism - Impressionist painting: Genesis and development in 1904. This was the first work to study the work of French painters in English, focusing on the claim that the French impressionists simply developed a painting technique by British artists John Constable and William Turner , ^[4]

According to Winford Dewhurst, artists who, like himself, working in an impressionistic manner, often “laughed imitating a foreign style”, ^[5] and he seeks to substantiate his position. "French artists simply developed the style that the English had in their concept." ^[6] Dewhurst’s statement was controversial. He raised the question of whether Impressionism was French or British in origin. In his works, Dewhurst also provided detailed biographical information about the most prominent impressionist artists.

In his work as an artist, Dewhurst became famous for paintings from the countryside in the vicinity of Dieppe and the Seine Valley. Here he painted regularly. He admitted that it was here that he found creative inspiration. Here he also studied the effect of purple in Monet's works.

Throughout his life, Dewhurst often exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists, at the New English Art Club from 1909 to 1910, and at the Royal Academy (where he lectured on art) from 1914 to 1926. Held two solo exhibitions in London; the first in the Walker Gallery in 1923, and in 1926 he held an exhibition of pastels in the society of fine arts.

Dewhurst exhibited at different times in Paris and Venice , in Buenos Aires in 1910, in Rome in 1911, held a number of personal exhibitions in Germany . Samples of his works can be found in state collections: three paintings, including summer fog, La Creuse Valley (c. 1920), are in the collection of the National Museum of Wales , Cardiff. Picnic (1908). His famous photograph, which illustrates the influence of Monet’s technique with small strokes of color, resulting in an optical mixture of colors when viewed from afar, is in the collection of the Manchester City Art Gallery .

In 1995, Dewhurst exhibited at an exhibition of paintings by impressionist artists under the name 'Impressionism in the UK' at the London Art Gallery. The exhibition showed that impressionism was prevalent not only in France but also in Britain.

• Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development. London: George Newnes, 1904.
• Wanted: a ministry of fine arts. London: Hugh Rees Ltd, 1913. (Reprinted in The Art Chronicle).

• Claude Monet, Impressionist in Pall Mall Magazine, June 1900.
• A Great French Landscapist in The Artist, October 1900.
• Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development , part 1, in The Studio. vol. XXXIX, April 1903.
• Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development , part 2, in The Studio. vol. XXXIX, July 1903.
• What is Impressionism? in Contemporary Review. vol. XCIX, 1911.

• Farr, Dennis, English Art, 1870-1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
• Flint, Kate, Impressionists in England: the critical reception. London: Routledge, 1984.
• McConkey, Kenneth, Impressionism in Britain, exh. cat., with an essay by Anna Gruetzner Robins. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Barbican Art Gallery, 1995.
• McConkey, Kenneth, British Impressionism. Oxford: Phaidon, 1989.
• Speiss, Dominique, Encyclopedia of Impressionists: From the Precursors to the Heirs. Helsinki: Edita, 1992.

• Wynford Dewhurst