Born in 1888 in Lancashire, Stanley Royle was a highly accomplished post-Impressionist

painter whose works are most notable for their evocative sense of light. As a boy, he was

influenced by his elder cousin Herbert Royle (1870 – 1958) who was already an established

painter, and under his encouragement Stanley attended Sheffield Technical School of Art

from 1904 – 1908, and after receiving a scholarship extended his tutorship until 1910. Shortly

after he began exhibiting professionally, with his first success coming in 1913 with three of

his paintings, including Spring Morning Amongst the Bluebells, being accepted at the Royal

Academy Summer Exhibition, where he continued to exhibit intermittently throughout his

career.

In 1920 he was elected a full member of the Royal Society of British Artists. The following

year he painted one his most beautiful works, The Goose Girl. Housed in the National Gallery

of Ireland collection, it was mistakenly attributed to the celebrated post-Impressionist Irish

painter, William Leech (1881-1968) – a testament to its quality, it was only correctly reattributed

in 1992.

Royle received his first major commission in 1922 to paint four large views of Sheffield and

today housed in Museums Shefflield. One of these works, Sheffield from Wincobank Wood was

included in the Tate Britain's exhibition A Picture of Britain in 2005. In the 1930s, Royle moved

to Canada to teach at the Novia Scotia College of Art - the beginning of an informative

association with the country. He subsequently became Director of the Owens Art Museum

and College of Art, a post he held for ten years. He painted some of his finest works in

Canada, the wild landscape and light particularly attuned to his sensibilities.