Identity:

Bernard Walter Evans was a landscape painter who lived in London. He was the son of the engraver and carpenter Walter Swift Evans and Sophia Evans (nee Spilsbury). He married Mary Ann Eliza Hollyer (b. ca 1846) in 1870.

Life:

His dates are generally given as 1848-1922 but there is some doubt about his birth date and place, the 1881 census giving Wolverhampton and saying that at that time he was 36 years old.

However, he studied painting in Birmingham under Samuel Lines, Edward Watson and William Wallace and went on to exhibit thriteen times at the Royal Acadamey from 1870 at the Society of British artists sixty-eight times. He was one of the founder members of the City of London Society of Artists and was also a member of the Society of Artists which met at Langham Chambers. In 1881 he was elected a member of the Savage Club. He painted landscapes in oil and watercolour and his subjects were mainly scenes of the Midlands and North Wales.

Bibliography:

UK census 1881 at http://www.familysearch.org (accessed 2004.03); Wood, C., The Dictionary of Victorian Painters, 2nd ed., Woodbridge, 1978, Evans, P & Lynn, A A Victorian Family of Artists, www.evans.artists.btinternet.co.uk (accessed 2003); http://www.getty.edu/research (accessed 2003).