Lot 39: Charles Edward Perugini (1839-1918)

The Hop Picker
signed with monogram (lower left)
oil on canvas
57 7/8 x 35 7/8 in. (147 x 91 cm.)

London, Royal Academy, 1877, no. 142.

THE PROPERTY OF A CALIFORNIAN COLLECTOR

Rarely seen in the auction rooms, work by Perugini deserves to be re-appraised. The high degree of finish in his paintings owes much to the influence of Frederic, Lord Leighton, who showed an interest in the artist from an early age, and shared his continental training. Born in Naples in 1839, Perugini first met Leighton in Rome in 1854 where the older artist was executing his first major works, Cimabue's celebrated Madonna is carried in procession through the streets of Florence, and The Reconciliation of Montagues and Capulets over the dead bodies of Romeo and Juliet. It is possible that like so many of Leighton's circle at that time, Perugini's likeness was taken for inclusion in Cimabue's Madonna. The artists' friendship continued in Paris in 1855, where Perugini studied under Ary Schaeffer, and they were reunited in London in 1863, where Perugini exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy.

Financial success eluded Perugini intially, and records in Leighton's account books show that he gave his friend much financial support. £140 was paid in 1870, £100 in 1871, £150 in 1872 and £350 in 1873-4. In Richard and Leonee Ormond's monograph on Leighton they suggest that Perugini was acting throughout this period as Leighton's studio assistant, (thereby enabling him to emulate Leighton's technique). Payments of between £100 and £200 per annum continued up to 1879. These cover the years of Perugini's marriage to Kate Dickens, daughter of the novelist Charles Dickens, and widow of the artist Charles Alston Collins, brother of the novelist Wilkie Collins, and the birth and tragically premature death of their son Dickie. Kate Dickens was also an artist, and sat to Millais in The Black Brunswicker of 1860, now in Tate Britain. (She also sat to Millais in a portrait of 1880).

Leighton's influence can be seen throughout Perugini's work: in Girl Reading now in the Manchester City Art Gallery, and in A Summer Shower in the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, which in its arrangement of three girls standing under a tree prefigures Leighton's Garden of the Hesperides. As Perugini's obituary in the Times of 23 December 1918 recorded: 'Elegance, purity, and correctness of draughtsmanship, perfect refinement and dignity, grace and charm, delicacy in colour, and the tenderness of harmonious line - these are the qualities of his academic art which are now, it must be recognised, outside the sweep of the modern movement, but which has delighted two generations of picture lovers who look for sound scholarship severely disciplined and veiled by melodious sweetness and distinction... Perugini's art reflected his nature. He commanded the respect and esteem of a large circle, and was regarded with particular attention by his friends who will acutely feel the loss of so worthy and loveable a man'. ... [His] death removes the last of the inner circle of intimates which included Leighton and Millais and formerly Fred Walker among the art-representatives of the recent past'.

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