Description
This lovely still life oil painting is signed by the artist, Eloise Harriet Stannard, in the lower left corner. The painting is finished with an ornate gold period frame.
About Eloise Harriet Stannard
Eloise Harriet Stannard (1829–1915) was born in Norwich, Norfolk. She was a painter, well known for her still life work.
Stannard came from a very artistic family, where she was one of the fourteen children of the painter and drawing teacher Alfred Stannard and Martha Stannard. She was also the niece of the well known painters, Joseph and Emily Coppin Stannard. They and Eloise’s father were members of the Norwich School of painters. Although Eloise and her aunt would become the only two notable women artists associated with the Norwich School.
Her painting style was influenced by traditional Dutch still life painters, including the artist Jan van Huysum.
Many of her subjects were of baskets and bowls of fruits, that were not grown in England, sometimes accented with small insects. Stannard is today considered one of Britain’s most gifted still life painters.
Stannard later became unwell but still maintained an active career as a painter, exhibiting regularly and becoming very successful. She began exhibiting in 1852, showing at the British Institution (1852–1866), the Royal Academy of Art (1856–1993), the Royal Society of British Artists (1856), and the Royal Glasgow Institute (1861).
In 1871 Eloise Stannard received an invitation from the Committee of the Female School of Arts, which asked her to be a judge for the school, although due to her poor health, this prevented her from accepting the invitation. She did however, become a member of the Society of Women Artists.
