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Overview
William Westley Manning (1868-1954) was a British landscape painter, etcher and aquatinter. Born in Marylebone, London, he studied initially at the Slade School of Fine Art, at the Académie Julian, Paris in 1892, and then at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under Malcolm Osborne. He was a prolific exhibitor including the Baillie Gallery, Chenil Gallery, Fine Art Society, Goupil Gallery, New English Art Club, Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Oil Painters and at many other venues in England and abroad. He was elected RBA in 1901, Associate of the Society of Painter-Etchers (ARE), 1919 and member of the Royal Institute of |Painters (ROI), 1918; he travelled extensively and was a frequent visitor to Cornwall and a member of the St Ives Society of Artists 1938-49. His work is in many public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum.
This highly attractive aquatint shows a marked similarity to effects pursued in another hugely popular medium at the time: pictorialist photography. Manning chooses a high viewpoint to depict the famous basilica of St Francis of Assisi with groups of poplars on the foreground slope on the left; the church is followed by meandering roads across fields and the scene melts into low hills in the distance.
See: British Museum, 'William Westley Manning (Biographical details)', http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=116016
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2018