Herbert Wilson Foster

Home from the Harvest Field, 19th Century Rural English Oil

1886

Oil on canvas, signed lower right Image size: 33 1/2 x 56 1/2 inches (85 x 143 cm) Original gilt frame Provenance With the artist's son, Millie Dow Stott Esq., until 1912. Artist's Studio Sale, Christies, November 1913. Private Collection Exhibitions London, Royal Academy, 1895, no. 679. Paris, Societe de la Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1896, no. 1179. Berlin, VII Internationale Kunstausstellung 1897. no. 3533. Manchester, City of Manchester Art Gallery, 1912, no. 339. In the 1890s William Stott exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, mainly highly decorative works with subjects derived from classical mythology and literature. This painting was Stott's 1895 entry to the Royal Academy and was subsequently exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1896 and then on to the Berlin, VII Internationale Kunstausstellung 1897. Shakespeare was a favourite source for Victorian painters, and the tragic romance of Ophelia, from Hamlet, was an especially popular subject, featuring regularly in the Royal Academy exhibitions. The most popular and iconic image of Ophelia's death was, and is to this day, John Everett Millais's 1851 painting showing the confused and tragic Ophelia floating downstream on her back in a state of mad ecstasy, arms raised in a gesture of inevitable submission. However, although Stott chose not to pastiche this image, it seems highly likely that he was prompted to take up this subject, which had almost become a 'rite of passage' among Victorian painters, by the fact that in 1894 Millais's Ophelia was presented to the National Gallery of British Art by Sir Henry Tate. It appears that Stott was much influenced by John William Waterhouse...

Oil on panel Image size: 20 x 16 inches (51 x 40.5 cm) Handmade gilt frame Provenance Family estate This preliminary oil sketch for one of O'Neil's most famous works, "Eastward Ho!...

William Powell Frith 'Dolly Varden' signed and dated 'W.P.Frith, 1876' (lower left) oil on canvas Provenance Anon. sale, Sotheby's, Billinghurst, 19 May 1999, lot 783. With The Bour...

John Rogers Herbert RA 1810- 1890 Oil on canvas, dated '1850' lower right on sword strap Image size: 33 ½ x 23 ½ inches Gilt Watts frame This striking painting, depicts David as a y...

Sir William Blake Richmond KCB, RA, PPRBSA 1842 - 1921 The Shepherd Egg tempera on wooden panel, signed with initials bottom left Image size: 8 ¼ x 5 ½ inches Period gilt oak frame A newly discovered work by the artist. Sir William Blake Richmond KCB, RA, PPRBSA was an English portrait painter, sculptor and a designer of stained glass and mosaic. He is best known for his portrait work and decorative mosaics in St Paul's Cathedral in London. He was the son of the portraitist George Richmond RA and studied at the Royal Academy Schools in the early 1860s. Influenced by his father and by Sir John Everett Millais, he is best known for his mosaic decorations below the dome and in the apse of St Paul's Cathedral in London. His father, George Richmond, was one of 'the Ancients' who were a group of artists who formed around the visionary artist and poet William Blake. Samuel Palmer was an other of the ancients and a close friend of the family. Our painting could have been inspired by George Richmond’s engraving 'The Shepherd', 1827, but in our panel the shepherd is turned round facing away, and is playing a flute instead of resting on a staff. But the sheep and other elements are there. It is also suggestive of Welby Sherman's engraving after Samuel Palmer of the same name and date, but here the shepherd is sitting but like ours turned away. William Blake's is an altogether happier image given the figure is playing to his sheep. Our painting is playing with some of the same ideas and feels like the same sort of period, and the ‘fresco’ like chalk ground is interesting, as is the pen and ink finishing on the tempera. All three are strongly influenced by Blake's illustrations to Thornton's 'Virgil'. The shepherd and his flock are clearly based on Thenot and his sheep in the Frontispiece to Thornton. Blake Richmond wrote:"If there be the least value in my pictures, it is due to such lovely early impressions derived from the sweet poetic work of many of my father's contemporaries, Calvert, Blake and others, whose shadows are substance still to me" [Sir William Blake Richmond, letter to his father, 50 years after the death of William Blake, from Stirling op. cit p. 28]. Richmond was given private art lessons by John Ruskin before attending the Royal Academy for three years. After that he spent a number of years in Italy, where an encounter with a shepherd called Beppino, 'a splendid speciman of a Sabine Shepherd', could also have gave him the inspiration for the painting we show here. Richmond recalls how he met Beppino on the hillside, and was invited to share the shade of the shepherd's capanna, a wooden hut. 'What a place! In an instant of time I was back into the age of kings, and I knew Romulus had lived and am sure that he lived in a hut exactly like this one'. That night Richmond dined at Beppino's hut 'on roast kid, hard bread dipped in Roman wine, goat's cream and white ricotta'. The shepherd had such an impression on Richmond that he sought him out on a return visit to Italy some years later, but was saddened to hear that Beppino 'had joined his fore-fathers in the shades'. He was moved to write the following, which perfectly expresses the mood of this painting and his tribute to a fleeting companion: 'Little events of this kind unite past times with present, create and emphasis continuity of human instincts, which seem to defy time and make travel so intensely interesting and invigorating to a citizen of this world. One need not go to the palace, far otherwise, or to cities and towns to discover the kernal of enduring civilisations. One finds it, if one wills to do so, in the backbone of the world, an ancient peasantry who have watched and still watch the progress of the stars'. Richmond was influential in the early stages of the Arts and Crafts Movement in his selection of bold colours and materials for the mosaics in St. Paul's Cathedral and in his collaboration with James Powell and Sons...

Arthur Moody Flourished 1920 - 1940 Leda and the Swan Oil on board Signed lower left and dated 1925 Image size: 15 × 8 inches (33.5 x 54 cm) Gilt frame

Provenance: Christie’s, London, 3 March 1922, lot 46 (with The Tower of Babel); James Nicoll Private Collection Sotheby’s, London, 29 March 1983, lot 157 Private Collection, New Yo...

Set of Four (4) Hunting Scenes British School, 20th century signed Hallard 4 x oil on board, framed inscribed verso each framed: 8.5 x 6.5 inches each board: 7.5 x 5.5 inches proven...

"The Mate" (Cornish fisherman) by David W. Haddon (British, early 20th century) signed and dated 1914 oil on board, framed framed: 18 x 14 inches board: 16 x 12 inches provenance: pr...

Clement Nye Swift "Breton Chores" 1870 Oil on Canvas Signed and Dated Lower Right Canvas Size: approx 27 x18 inches Framed Size: approx 34 x 35 inches Provenance: Private Midwes...

Artist/ School: Charles Leslie (British 19th century), signed and dated 1875 Title: The Panoramic Loch. Beautiful and majestic Scottish Highlands loch scene with figures walking alo...

Head Portrait of a Terrier Dog by W. Mitchell (English, late 19th Century) oil on canvas, unframed canvas: 12 x 10 inches provenance: private collection, UK condition: very good and ...