The Irish-born Norman Garstin originally trained as an engineer and studied architecture. He took up painting after being a diamond dealer in South Africa in the 1870s. During the 1880s Garstin trained in fine art in Antwerp and in Paris. He settled in Newlyn, Cornwall in 1886 and became a member of the New English Art Club and the Newlyn School. This painting of the Bull Burford from Sheep Street was made during a visit Garstin made to Oxfordshire around 1916. The Bull has been an inn since 1536 and has had a brick front since the eighteenth century, the only one on Burford High Street. The Bull Hotel, Burford (circa 1916) was bequeathed by the artist’s daughter Althea Garston (1894-1978) to the Contemporary Art Society along with at least 40 other works by her father that were presented to public galleries throughout the UK and abroad.