Lot 73: Adrian Scott Stokes R.A. (British, 1854-1935) Autumn landscape 23 1/2 x 32 1/4in (60 x 82cm)

Adrian Scott Stokes R.A. (British, 1854-1935)
Autumn landscape
signed 'Adrian Stokes' (lower left)
oil on canvas
23 1/2 x 32 1/4in (60 x 82cm)
Footnotes

Provenance
with DeVille Gallery, Beverly Hills, California;
Acquired from the above by the father of the present owner, mid-1960s.

Exhibited
Royal Academy, 1918, no.400 (one of the three paintings shown by Stokes at Burlington House)

The Kennet, a chalk stream tributary of the Thames, had provided Stokes with subject matter for his landscape painting since 1892, when he had first submitted a painting entitled Evening on the Kennet to the Institute of Painters in Oil. Its banks, depicted here in the chill of autumn with a lone fisherman wrapped up against the cold, gave him ample chance to explore patterns and to return to some favourite themes, namely reeds against water and lacy foliage against sky. A keen sportsman all his life, he liked tackling a river's edge from the viewpoint of actually being in the water and his forays to the art colonies in Barbizon, Fontainebleau, and Skagen in Northern Denmark in the 1880's and 90's had given him the confidence to invite his viewer to feel equally immersed in the scene. This composition provides a contrast to the mountainous Alpine subjects Stokes was often preoccupied by during the war years and marks a return to more gentle subject matter. Throughout his long career he excelled at painting the surfaces of trees and their leaves, blowing in a breeze, often against a bright sky and many examples contain his beloved silver birches, whose papery trunks could create interesting, sparkling effects.

The book Stokes published in 1925, Landscape Painting, is very much a practical manual for fellow artists and younger students, and contains detailed instructions on how to divide up the structure of one's composition: the placing of the horizon in this painting would have been clearly worked out. A broad expanse of sky that might often seem at first glance to be too generous, one of the best examples of this is Uplands and Sky, the large painting purchased by the Chantry bequest for the Tate in 1888. Technically accomplished, the careful preparation of each canvas meant that he could apply thick layers of white and greys to build up not just the shape but the feel of the clouds beyond the trees. He returned to the theme of boats on tranquil waters in his paintings in oil submitted to the Royal Academy in 1920, namely Floods near Locarno and his Diploma work for full membership of the Royal Academy, the Lago Maggiore, both measuring roughly the same as the current work.

We are grateful to Magdalen Evans for providing this catalogue note.