Thomas Edward Mostyn ROI, RWA (1864-1930)

Thomas Mostyn was a figure and portrait painter whose earlier work has a tendency to the Symbolist. He was born into a Manchester family (though his birthplace was Liverpool), and after an apprenticeship to a firm of lithographers, studied at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, and then at the Bushey school of Herkomer. He later lived in St John's Wood, and Torbay in Devon, with which he is particularly associated.

He exhibited 14 works at the Royal Academy, commencing in 1891. Among his more Pre-Raphaelite works are a Blessed Damozel from a poem by Rossetti, and Dreamers. He also painted girls out of doors and portraits. (examples are in the Manchester Art Gallery collection), but it is particularly the atmospheric landscapes which are most highly regarded today. (e.g. Sunlight, Burnham Beeches at the Laing Art Gallery), and, as here, the effects of flowers and the dark woods on shady pools.