Samuel Sidley, R.B.A. (1829-1896) "A Winter Song" oil painting on canvas, 1896, depicting a young girl in a snowy road, smiling at a singing red-breasted robin, apparently unsigned, with Royal Academy Label to verso, and plaque reading "A Winter Song / Samuel Sidley, R.B.A. 1896 / Exhibited Royal Academy 1897" to frame, housed in a Baroque Revival period gilt wood frame with floral design. Image: 53" H x 37.75" W; frame: 61" H x 45.5" W.

Note: Sidley was successful as a painter of Victorian portraits and genre subjects. He studied at Manchester School of Art and the Royal Academy, exhibiting 31 works at the RA between 1855-95. As a portraitist, he garnered important commissions from society sitters such as the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham and Bishop Colenso (1866, National Portrait Gallery). Despite the plaque and label on the painting's reverse, this painting does not appear to have been posthumously exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of London in 1897. The painting may have been submitted for consideration, but was instead exhibited at the Royal Cambrian Academy, where it was very well-received by the local press which wrote: "'A Winter Song' (No. 2), by the late Mr S. Sidley, is a charming idea, prettily worked out, showing a pretty little girl standing on the snow-covered carriage drive of a large mansion, intently listening to the song of a robin redbreast perched open-mouthed on a branch close to the little mite of humanity, and about the level of her head here again, the colouring is true to nature, and the general effect is pleasing." (The Weekly News and Visitors' Chronicle for Colwyn Bay, Colwyn, Llandrillo, Conway, Deganwy, and Neighbourhood, 4 June 1897).