Edward Francis Wells was a painter of pastoral scenes and portraits. He trained at the Royal Academy Schools and painted in a traditional ‘old master’ style. He exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition and at smaller commercial galleries in London and elsewhere. The artist signed his work E. F. Wells.
A Dorset upbringing Edward Francis Wells was born in Chinsurah, India, on 3 April 1876.‘British India Office Births and Baptisms’, findmypast.co.uk. His father, William Howley Wells (known as Howley), worked in the Indian Civil Service as an engineer, and his mother was Annie Maria Wells (née Ring). Edward had a younger sister, Maud, but two older siblings had died of cholera, and it was health concerns that led the family to move back to England in 1879.Anthony H. Hull (1990), E. F. Wells: His Art, Life and Times (Stroud: Sutton), p. 1. Shortly after the family’s return to England and through fellow old Etonian Henry Fox-Strangways (who was now the 5th Earl of Ilchester), Howley Wells was offered the stewardship of Fox-Strangways’s estate at Melbury Park, Dorset. The family moved into a tied property at Evershot on the edge of the estate,Address: ‘Moorfields’, Evershot, Dorset. Reference: Hull, 1990, p. 1. where his parents were to live for the next thirty years.
An art education At the age of nine Edward was sent to a preparatory school at Bournemouth and two years later progressed to Clifton College, a private boarding school in Bristol, where he met Frank Moss Bennett (1874–1952), who was to become a lifelong friend and a popular artist.Rehs Galleries https://rehs.com/eng/default-19th20th-century-artist-bio-page/?fl_builder&artist_no=335&sold=1. In the early 1890s Wells expressed his ambition to be an artist, and his family encouraged him by adapting a milking parlour into a studio.Hull, 1990, p. 5.
Wells and Bennett both first attended the Slade School of ArtStudent records show Wells starting at the Slade in 1892. and then briefly attended St John's Wood Art School before almost four years at the Royal Academy Schools (from February 1896). In his first year at the Royal Academy Schools, Wells won the Creswick Award for best landscape painting with A Farm on the HillThe Creswick Prize was £30. Reference The Art Journal, 1897 at https://archive.org/details/sim_art-journal-us_1897/page/n453/mode/2up?q=%22Edward+Francis+Wells%22 – a picture that was selected for the Royal Academy's summer exhibition the following year.
In March 1900 Wells and Bennett travelled to Italy, visiting Florence, Siena, Rome, Naples, Capri and Venice. They returned to England in 1901, and formally left the Royal Academy Schools in January of that year.
Patronage and a one-man show
Keen to establish himself as a professional artist, Wells rented a studio in Chelsea – considered London’s art centreNo. 11 Onslow Studios, Onslow Place, Chelsea. – and in February 1902 he joined the Chelsea Arts Club. Under the patronage of two of the younger members of the Fox-Strangways family,Lady Helen Vane-Tempest-Stewart (the Countess of Ilchester) and her sister-in-law Lady Muriel Augusta Fox-Strangways. Ref: Hull, 1990, p. 8 a large exhibition of Wells’s watercolour sketches took place in Dorchester; works included were Italian pastoral scenes, Dorset scenes and also some pastel portraiture.The exhibition took place at Henry Duke Company, South Street, Dorchester, in 1902. 230 works were exhibited. Hull, 1990, p. 8. Wells’s father had strong views on art and favoured the ‘old masters’. He was somewhat obsessed by technique and by a pseudo-scientific pursuit of objective reality through the ‘true’ rendering of colour and tone. In this respect he seems to have been influential on Edward’s evolving style of picture-making. Howley was also Edward’s financial backer. The father and son’s preference for the training he received at the Royal Academy Schools over the Slade School of Art also indicates their conservative view of art. Wells’s work always demonstrated a desire for technical exactitude, and he undoubtedly had a particular facility to create a good ‘likeness’ in portraiture.Hull, 1990, p. 109
The Wells family’s social connections to the landed gentry and its ‘old-boy network’ placed Edward in a good position to set up himself up primarily as a portrait painter. Initially he often worked in pastels – which let him work quickly, often requiring only one sitting. Selections of these pastel portraits were exhibited at the Carlton Gallery London in 1904.Carlton Gallery at Pall Mall Place, London. For an example of Wells’s pastel portraits of this period see The Hon. Margaret Bruce (1882–1947), Countess of Bradford 1905. Reproduced at https://artuk.org/discover/artists/wells-edward-francis-18761952-58449.
Courting
Throughout this period Edward had been courting Anne Helen Pellew, the daughter of an Indian Civil Service judge.Born 30 April 1879 in Fort William, Bengal, India, http://www.townsley.info/Strangeway/GedSite/g4/p3969.htm#i198404. Like Edward, although born in India, she had grown up in England. Her family had a Clifton address,Address: Rodney House, Clifton. and it seems likely that the two became acquainted when Wells was at school there. She was musical, poetic, ‘very delicate’, and came to ‘adore’ Edward, who apparently ‘ministered to her every need’.Hull, 1990, p. 28.
Anne frequently stayed at Wimbledon, in south London, where her mother owned a property. When she could escape her six siblings, Anne and Edward enjoyed London life, attending concerts, exhibitions and the theatre, and liking to eat at fashionable ‘bohemian’ restaurants on the Fulham Road, near Edward’s studio. This was the era of Edwardian country-house parties, and weekends were often spent at the homes of family friends and sometimes gatherings at Evershot. A portrait of ‘Annie’ was selected for the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1905.
It was presumably through Frank Bennett’s close friendship with Wells that Frank met Anne’s sister Margaret, and the two were married in August 1907.Hull, 1990, p. 32.
Exhibition success
Aside from the commercial necessity to paint portraits, Wells’s artistic preference was for pastoral subjects. He exhibited pastoral watercolours at Dudley Art SocietyFirstly in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, before 1904 and later at the Alpine Club in Conduit Street. and at the Modern Gallery in Bond Street.Hull, 1990, p. 10. More ambitious oil paintings – such as Milking Time, exhibited at the Grafton Galleries, London, in 1905 – reveal painstaking attention to detail.‘Autumn Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries’ 1905. Vera Campbell, writing in The World, felt that ‘praise can be given to Mr. E. F Wells’s Milking Time, with its pleasant reminiscence of Richard Wilson’s landscapes.’The World, 7 November 1905.
By 1907 Wells was having further exhibiting success: rural scenes were exhibited with the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour and at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and a group portrait of Captain Peter Ormrod’s children Maggie, Guy and JoanCaptain Peter Ormrod (1869–1923) had inherited Wyresdale Hall and a 6,000-acre (2400-hectare) estate within the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, in 1895. was selected for the RA summer exhibition. Despite this success, when Anne and Edward explained their plans to marry, Wells’s father was brutally frank about the reality of Edward becoming self-supporting as an artist:
Your prospects in the profession are still as you will allow, very precarious indeed & must be the cause of anxiety, and however good your work may be it has yet to be recognised. To risk the responsibilities of marriage & with heavy studio rent to be paid out on such small means certainly amounts to a gamble which in my opinion no one has a right to undertake.Letter, W. H. Wells to E. F. Wells, 16 July 1909. Quoted in Hull, 1990, p. 37.
A creative peak
The couple were determined to go ahead with the marriage; however, in July 1909, before the wedding, Edward’s father unexpectedly died of a stroke. While this was seen as a personal tragedy by Edward – who greatly admired his father – it did result in an inheritance from a trust that his father had set up for Edward, his sister and their mother. Around the same time a further modest legacy from a cousin provided the couple with some additional security.England and Wales Government Probate Death Index, 1858–2019 at findmypast.co.uk records W. H. Wells’s death on 21 July 1909. The effects totalled £24,588 to be divided between William’s wife and their two children. They married in early 19104 January 1910. Hull, 1990, p. 38. and honeymooned in Corsica – which inspired Wells’s Distant View of Ajaccio.Purchased by Huddersfield Corporation following an exhibition at the town’s art gallery. Hull, 1990, p. 40. Edward was now brother-in-law to his best friend, Frank Bennett (who became a popular and successful artist of historical subjects).
Edward and Anne initially lived at Wells’s rented studio in Chelsea;Wells was renting Rossetti Studios in Rossetti Gardens near Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, from 1908. Ref.: Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905–1970 volume VI, SHERR–ZUL, EP Publishing, 1982. but when their daughter Judith was born,Judith Wells born March 1911, Hull, 1990, p. 40. they moved to bigger rented premises, also in Chelsea.Cedar House, at 48 Glebe Place, for which they paid £150 a year. Hull, 1990, p. 42.
The next few years saw Wells at the height of his artistic ambitions, working on a larger scale; The Shower of Gold,https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/edward-francis-wells-the-shower-of-gold-221-c-cd74bf6838 gives the size as ‘55 x 39 1/2 inches' (140×100 cm). a reinterpretation of the legend of Danae, was selected for the Royal Academy in 1911 and was well received: ‘Laburnums droop over a nude girl lying asleep below the vivid bloom: the effect is superb, and very decorative.’Academy 13 May 1911. Anne (known to Edward as ‘Nan’) initially posed for the female figure, before a professional model took up the pose. The painting apparently achieved the accolade of a parody in Punch.Hull, 1990, p. 128 cites Punch, c. May 1911, although this reference has not been confirmed. The following year a pastoral scene of harvest time, The Last Load, was also selected for the Royal Academy.
In October 1913, Edward and Anne moved out of London and rented a cheaper and larger property in Milton Abbas, Dorset; and by the following year there were three children – Judith (b.1911), Sylvia (b.1912) and Bill (b.1914)Delcombe Manor is at Milton Abbas, Dorset, Hull, 1990, p. 42. References for Judith and Sylvia’s birth dates on p.40 and Bill’s on p.50 The return to Dorset inspired the large and dramatic Wareham Heath, Dorset. Soon, however, the First World War was affecting all aspects of life in Britain, and opportunities for portrait commissions were few; Wells now worked mainly on small watercolour pastoral scenes. When their three-year lease expired and there was no end to the war in sight, they moved to Wimbledon, where Wells’s mother-in-law still owned a property.7 North View, Wimbledon. Hull, 1990, p. 46.
In 1916 conscription was introduced for men aged from 18 to 41, and in May 1917 Wells – then 41 – was called up for military service.Private in the 7th Platoon, B Company, of the 17th Essex Battalion. He was placed in category C1 – ‘Garrison Service at Home Camp’See https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/blog/2017/01/16/conscription-the-first-bill-of-conscription-introduced-to-british-parliament – and after initial training in Norfolk he was posted to the War Office in London, where he carried out clerical duties until he was demobilised in February 1919.Hull, 1990, pp. 47–9.
Family tragedy and diminishing income