Ernest Albert Waterlow was born in London and studied at the Royal Academy Schools, where in 1873 he gained the Turner Medal for landscape painting.

Waterlow began to exhibit in 1872 and produced a considerable number of admirable landscapes in oil and watercolour, handled with grace and distinction. One of his pictures, Galway Gossips, is in the Tate Gallery.

Waterlow traveled extensively in Ireland and on the Continent, yet it was the gentle rural life in England which appealed to him most. Following his attendance at Waterlow's studio sale at Christie's in 1920, Martin Hardie remarked that the artist's "somewhat idyllic landscapes, found mainly in southern England, are marked by harmony of colour and quiet refineme...