Alfred Augustus Glendening, to give him his full name and to distinguish him from his son, also Alfred, was originally employed as a railway clerk before turning to painting as a full-time artist. Glendening was a painter of landscapes, in a period of increasing industrialisation and the growth of a wealthy middle class of city dwellers the English landscape took on a new meaning, redolent with nostalgia for the perceived benefits of life in the countryside.

His work was in considerable demand. Naturalistic views of Kent, the Sussex Downs and the River Thames proved immensely popular with Londoners keen to remind themselves of the countryside on their doorstep. Further afield at a time of growing rail travel his views of Norfolk and Yorkshire and the more picturesque scenes of Scotland and Wales found an eager market.

Glendening exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1865 to 1903 and at the British Institution and Suffolk Street Galleries. Living in South London all his life it is the landscape of Kent, Sussex and Surrey that predominate in his oeuvre. Painted with a soft delicate technique his views depict the cultivated landscape with always a sense of human habitation.

Glendening’s son Alfred Glendening, RBA was his pupil and a successful painter in oils and watercolour stylistically similar to his father.