Provenance • The artist’s estate; retained by the family after the artist’s death. • Sotheby’s Sussex, Billingshurst, Collections of Watercolours and Oil Paintings from the Studios of Arthur John Elsley, George Ayling, S.M.A., and Honor C. Appleton (Studio Sale), 2 October 1989, lot 4 (“Sunlight Through Trees by a River”). • Private collection, United Kingdom. • Acquired by the present owner through auction, 2025. Literature • Sotheby’s Sussex, Collections of Watercolours and Oil Paintings from the Studios of Arthur John Elsley, George Ayling, S.M.A., and Honor C. Appleton, sale catalogue, Billingshurst, 2 October 1989, p. 5, lot 4 (not illustrated). • Terry Parker, Arthur J. Elsley 1861–1952, London, 1998, pp. 14–16, for discussion of the 1989 Studio Sale and Elsley’s plein-air landscape practice.