Weather and Water
25th January - June 2025
It is universally agreed that we can no longer ignore climate change. Who knows what winter next year will have in store for us. Come out of the storm and shelter in Bushey Museum and Art Gallery.
Oil on canvas
More about the painting:
This is a very powerful image for a painter who was rather overshadowed by her sister, putting Lucy's career before her own, acting as their housekeeper. The artwork was probably painted between August and October 1919 when Edith and her sister Lucy were staying at Cadgwith, Cornwall.
Edith joined the Herkomer School of Art with her sister in 1892 and after a time moved to Kinglsey, High Street, Bushey with Lucy for the rest of their lives. She exhibited at the Royal Academy and with the Society of Women Artists and Royal Miniature Society. She took over 18 Meadow Studios between 1910 and 1918.
In 1907 Hubert von Herkomer wrote:
“When I first settled in Bushey, some 34 years ago (1873), it was a sleepy, picturesque village. It had no water laid on, as there was no sanitation, except of the most primitive kind. The drinking water was brought to the houses in buckets, for which the old people, who carried it around, charged halfpenny a bucket. The one and only well from which they could obtain drinking water was situated quite near the churchyard – a rather doubtful proximity. There was, of course, the usual well attached to each house for collecting surface water, which I remember was always well stocked with live matter”.
An English village so near London, however, could not escape from the advancing influences of the times, which meant change, if not progress, and it was the formation of my school that perhaps hastened the change.….”
Nowadays we might question Herkomer’s use of the word “progress”. We take for granted our morning shower and clean clothes at the same time hearing reports of climate change and water pollution.
The Colne Valley Water Company was a statutory water company found in 1873, - some years later a deep well was sunk near Watford, from which Herkomer was able to supply hot and cold water in each of the rooms of Lululaund, the grand house he built in Bushey between 1886 and 1894.
This exhibition displays how Herkomer’s students and others viewed weather and water scenes – we can reflect and wonder about the future.
Exhibition Organisers: Hannah Schoenholz and Laura Garrida-Gonzolez