Circa 1920.
Signed lower right. Complete in its original frame and mount.
Total hight 38cm x 35cm wide.

Ref: 25586

George Hyde Pownall 1866-1939: An English artist known for his depictions of London Street scenes, and a noted musician.
Born in Radcliffe-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire. He had five children with his wife Mary Blanche, two sons and a daughter pre-deceased Pownall. One, Francis George Hyde Pownall, was killed at Pozières in France during the First World War.
In 1912 he was living at 53 Cambridge Gardens, Kensington.
He studied music under Dan Price at the Royal College of Music and was a well-known tenor in London in the 1890s. He was on the musical staff at Westminster Abbey and St Andrew’s church, Wells Street. He was a soloist at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church for ten years and a member of the choir of Westminster Cathedral. As an instrumentalist, he worked as a pianist for the vaudeville orchestra at St George’s Hall, Marylebone, and was a conductor of the Maskelyne and Devant orchestra. He toured Britain as the pianist for Sir Herbert Tree.
Pownall worked at a time when horse-drawn and motor vehicle traffic coexisted in London streets and gas light was still commonplace making his nocturnal or twilight images very evocative. His work has been compared to John Atkinson Grimshaw and James Abbott McNeill Whistler in its impressionistic feeling.
He emigrated to Australia, eventually settling in Melbourne around 1914.