William Joseph Julius Caesar Bond (1833-1926)
A Rustic Bridge on a Sunny Day
Oil on panel; signed, labelled
6 ¼ x 8 ¼ inches
£1,800
Provenance
E. Stacy-Marks, Eastbourne, East Sussex
Bond (known in the picture trade as 'Alphabet' Bond because it was hard to remember his initials after he added 'Julius Caesar' to his forenames) was a long-lived Liverpool artist, who died at the age of 93. He began to paint as a protégé of John Miller, an early Liverpool collector of Pre-Raphaelite pictures and enthusiastic patron of local artists, and his early work is unmistakably Pre-Raphaelite in style. Along with Campbell, Davis, Windus and other Liverpool painters, Bond contributed to the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in Russell Place in 1857. However, his later, mature pictures from the 1870s, painted out-of-doors on small panels, are influenced by Constable and Turner.