Artemis (oil on canvas)

Apperley was largely self-taught but did spend some time under Herkomer at The Bushey School of Art. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1905 and widely on the Continent, and in 1916 he moved to Spain. Apperley began to paint large figurative oils in the Art Nouveau style peculiar to the Catalonians, known as 'Modernisme', earlier defined by the painters Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Casas. Like his contemporary, the painter Beltran-Masses, Apperley was also influenced by Belgian Symbolism, and his erotically charged paintings are often of subjects from Greek mythology, orphic mysteries and fantasies of Asia. Affected by the upheavals of the Spanish Civil War, he moved to Tangier in 1932.