Still Life with Apples, Grapes, Pear, Roses and Cactus Flowers
Edwin Steele (1839–1919)
The Schorr Collection
Edwin Steele was the third child and second son of Edwin Steele senior (1803/05–1871) and his wife Charlotte (nee Laban). Both men were from a family of flower and fruit painters working mainly on ceramics, and well-known for that, but these two also painted on canvas in later life. Edwin junior was born on 6th May 1839 in Russell Street, Shelton, Hanley, when his mother’s surname was noted as ‘formerly Kirk’ rather than Laban (which lacks current explanation). By 1841 the family had moved to Wolverhampton where Edwin senior worked for Ryton & Walton as a flower/fruit painter and Japanner on their domestic papier-maché wares: trays, boxes etc., and some quite large decorative panels. They returned to the Potteries sometime between the birth of the last child, Eliza, in 1842, and 1851, when they were living in Keeling Lane, Hanley.
In 1881 at 57 Peel Street (late Regent Street) he was just called ‘Artist’; in 1891 at 115 Waterloo Road, Burslem, ‘Flower and Fruit Pottery Painter’ and in 1901 ‘Artist in Oils’. He was then at 36 Dinsdale View, Porthill (or Wolstanton) on the outskirts of Newcastle-under-Lyme. In 1911, widowed and still living there with his daughter Florence, he was called a ‘Painter of Flowers on Canvases’. His death on 2nd December 1919 was registered in Birmingham. References to him as ‘Edwin H. Steele’ appear to be misunderstandings of record and a baptismal one has not been found.
There are fifteen flower and fruit paintings attributed to ‘Edwin Steele’ on Art UK. It is hard to be entirely sure what is by who, given their very similar styles and signatures, but most (11) seem to be by Edwin junior and the only four dated ones (1889–1908) must be. Others have been sighted on the market dating 1868–1918, which might include late work by his father. The broad conclusion seems to be that Edwin junior gradually abandoned pottery decoration in the 1890s to concentrate on the oil painting that he had begun to practise some time earlier, and was doing so full-time by about 1900.
Edwin junior’s son, Edwin James Steele (b.1861), was described as a ‘China Painter’ in the 1881 census, when still living with his parents at 57 Peel Street, Hanley, and a ‘Painter’, when he married Emily Cambridge, daughter of William, a tailor, on 10th September 1883 at St Mark’s, Birmingham. No children have been noted and they appear to have separated between 1901 and 1911. Report of the 1891 census gives his occupation then as ‘Enamel Painter’ and in that of 1911 he was a bedstead ‘Ornamenter’ lodging at 205 King Edward’s Road, Ladywood, Birmingham. By 1921 he had moved to no. 147 and was a ‘Porter’ for a Birmingham manufacturing jeweller. He remained on the Ladywood electoral roll until 1931 and his death was registered in Birmingham in April 1933.
Summarised from Art UK’s Art Detective discussion ‘Did Edwin Steele (1861–1933) paint this still life of flowers and fruit?’
Text source: Art Detective
