Edmund George Warren was perhaps the best known of all Victorian watercolourists to specialise in arboreal landscapes and woodland scenes. He painted minutely detailed views of shady glades and the forest floor, and delighted in describing the effects of sunlight breaking through the canopy of leaves. He also enjoyed painting harvest scenes in the company of George Vicat Cole.
Edmund George Warren was probably born at Vine Cottage, Thistle Grove, north of the Fulham Road, in London. He was one of at least four sons – and possibly one daughter – of the painter, Henry Warren, to follow in their father’s footsteps. The others were Albert Henry (1830-1911), Bonomi Edward (active 1860-79) and Henry Clifford (born 1843) – and also Fanny C Warren (active 1865-66), who was a member of the Warren household in 1866.
Henry was a genre and landscape painter who specialised in Arabian subjects, and became closely associated with the New Society of Painters in Water Colours, as a member from 1835 and President from 1839. (The society was renamed the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1885.)
E G Warren began to exhibit works in 1852, the year in which he was elected an associate of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours. This was his principal venue for exhibition, and he would become a full member there four years later. He focussed on the southern counties of England, sometimes in the company of fellow painter, George Vicat Cole. However, from early in his career, he also travelled widely across Britain, going as far as the Isle of Arran in the north and the River Wye in the west in search of rural subjects, and later extending his range to include Ireland.
The Warren family lived at Hortulan House, on the King’s Road, in the 1850s, and at 24 Upper Phillimore Place, on Kensington High Street, in the 1860s. By 1868, Edmund had moved along the road to 29 Upper Phillimore Place and, by 1872, round the corner to 1a Phillimore Gardens. Then, in the 1880s, he lived further north at Flat 6, 1 Colville Mansions, Powis Terrace, Talbot Road, Bayswater. While there, he became a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (1883-1903), though he continued to work in watercolour until the end of his career.
In the early 1890s, E G Warren began to have some financial problems, and was listed as a bankrupt in 1895. In that year, he moved to Ridge Cottage, Chudleigh, Devon, on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. As is evidenced by the present watercolour of Berry Pomeroy Castle, he had been painting the area since the mid 1850s. Still living in Chudleigh in 1908, he died in Edmonton, Middlesex, in August 1909.
