Lot 43: Ernest Normand , British 1857 - 1923 Playthings oil on canvas

signed Ernest Normand and dated 1886 (lower right) oil on canvas

measurements 33 by 66 in. alternate measurements 83.8 by 167.6 cm

London, Royal Academy, 1886, no. 137
London, Owen Edgar Gallery, A Victorian Collection, May 8-June 27, 1980, p. 80, no. 3

"Pictures of the Year," Pall Mall Gazette, 1886, p. 15
F. Rinder, "The Art of Ernest Normand," Art Journal, 1901, p. 140
Christopher Wood, Olympian Dreamers, Victorian Classical Painters, 1860-1914, London, 1983, p. 246, illustrated pp. 246-7

Sir W. Veno
Owen Edgar Gallery, London (in 1980)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

The Art Journal's 1901 profile of Ernest Normand's describes his unlikely path to artistic achievement. The London-born Normand traveled to Germany at a young age to study commercial law for two years in Gotha. Upon his return to England, Normand launched a business career, yet at the end of his work days he attended classes at the Saint Martin School of Art. As Normand's artistic pursuits accelerated, he became particularly interested in the Classical period, and his remaining free time was spent at the British Museum drawing from the Antique artifacts on display (Rinder, p. 140). By 1880 at the age of twenty-three, Normand had gained entrance to the Royal Academy school, and became a full-time painter. His success was secured when Playthings was named one of the pictures of the year at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1886. The artist acknowledged the influence of Frederic, Lord Leighton, George Frederic Watts, Val Prinsep and Edward Poytner in his Classical and Biblical subjects and those of medieval legend and Renaissance poetry. However many of Normand's most celebrated works, like Playthings, most closely recall Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's popular compositions, which blend ancient motifs with genre subjects. Playthings' young mother at leisure, delighting in her child's grasping at the fleeting goldfish in a pool, evokes Alma-Tadema's belief that "there is not such a great difference between the ancients and the modern as we are apt to suppose... [they] were human flesh and blood like ourselves, moved by much the same passions and emotions" (as quoted in Julian Treuherz, "Introduction to Alma-Tadema," in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, exh. cat., Amsterdam, 1996, p. 11). Like Alma-Tadema, Normand did not look toward the ancient world in search of philosophical enlightenment, but instead for a setting for his themes of drama, romance, and beauty. In Playthings, architectural elements of highly polished marble and geometric wall paintings of ancient Greece or Rome are combined with decidedly Middle Eastern decorative objects like bronze hookahs and perfume burners to create a mix and match of exotic interest. Rather than focusing on historical accuracy, filling the picture space with extraneous clutter or costume, Playthings demonstrates Normand's concern with creating an arresting and compelling visual appeal based on the beauty of the human form, here the woman unabashedly displayed in a revealing costume bedecked in gold bangles and bracelets. Such technique was applauded by the Art Journal's writer who noted Normand's work was "a marked advance on its predecessors; detail does not obtrude, there is greater simplicity" (Rinder, p. 140).