Clarance Henry Roe

This dramatic landscape is the work of renowned Victorian artist, Clarence Henry Roe.

The work depicts a mountainous  scape, most probably the western Scottish highlands as this was an area so inspirational to Clarence.

Oil on artist board,  Double mounted in gilt and gesso frame.

Original gilt frame and mount being in good condition with no loss of gesso.

Size 70 cm x 54 cm

visible painting. 49 x 35 cm

About

Clarence Henry Roe had the potential to be one of the greatest British painters of the Victorian era… but he ended his life in a Yorkshire asylum as an alcoholic suffering from delusions and hallucinations.

It was a sad end for a man brought up in West Yorkshire, who had shown so much artistic promise.

Clarence was the eldest son of Robert Henry Roe and Emma Baily.

Robert Henry Roe was intimately acquainted with great artists such as Turner, the Landseers, Herring and Copley, and Emma was a daughter of E H Baily, sculptor of the figure of Nelson on the Trafalgar Square column.

The Roe family lived in Hampstead but then lived in Scotland during the mid to late 1850s and by 1860 they settled in West Yorkshire when Clarence was 10 years old. Artistic talent ran in the family and Clarence’s three brothers and one of his sisters were all artists of repute.

Clarence was a prolific artist, turning out landscapes, often featuring the Scottish highlands, on a near-industrial scale. One dealer had known him paint two 36-inch by 24-inch canvases in one day. He usually received £30 or £40 each for his paintings, and at the time was making a thousand pounds a year, a considerable sum in the later 19th century.