A pleasing springtime landscape painting of a woman feeding birds outside a cottage by Robert John Hammond. A young woman is depicted standing by a path outside a thatched cottage. As she feeds birds on the ground, others are shown alighting from nearby blossom trees. To the right of the figure, a stream can be seen winding around a haybarn, whilst in the distance beyond the peaks of a hill range provide a dramatic backdrop. The topography is similar to that of the Brendon Hills near Exmoor, which the artist is known to have painted.

Robert John Hammond was a landscape painter born in Blackfriars, London in 1853. By the time he was 18 he had moved to Sutton Coldfield where he initially became an apprentice watchmaker before becoming a full time artist. In 1871, he married Lucy Banner, the sister of the artist Alfred Banner (1860-1914) at Kings Norton, Worcestershire. They lived at 90 Kyrwicks Lane, Bordesley in Birmingham before moving to 467 Moseley Road, Balsall Heath.

Hammond became well known for his landscapes and rural scenes of the surrounding countryside but also travelled further afield to Bristol, Bournemouth, Cornwall, Devon and Sheffield as well as Scotland and Wales. His son Horace Hammond (1879-1966) became a lithographer and landscape artist who used the pseudonyms of A D Bell and J Barclay.

He exhibited widely between 1882-1911 at the Royal Society of Artist, Birmingham as well as at the Manchester City Art Gallery. Hammond’s paintings show a pre-Raphaelite influence, particularly in his rendering of the landscape and use of colours. Often depicting cottages and rosy cheeked children at play they served as a reminder of a life far removed from the emerging industrial cities of the time. Towards the end of his life he lived at 3 Walford Road in Aston.

An example of his work can be found at the Birmingham Museum.

© Benton Fine Art