Lot 341: Erskine Nicol, R.S.A., A.R.A. (1825-1904)

The Valentine signed and dated 'ENicol/1874' (lower right) oil on canvas 30 x 21 in. (76.2 x 53.3 cm.) PROVENANCE Anon. sale, Sotheby's at Slane Castle, Ireland, 12 May 1980, lot 426, when acquired by the present owner. EXHIBITION 32 Victorian Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection, 1981. Childhood in Victorian England, 1985, no. 26. Victorian Childhood, 1986, cat. pl. 21. NOTES Several of Nicol's paintings revolve around the arrival or reading of a letter or newspaper. Typically the cottager shown is grimacing or smiling as he or she struggles to read, sign a document or compose a letter. Other artists used the device of a letter to tell a story, Charles W. Cope's Palpitation of 1844 alludes to romance and the transmission of news abroad is the subject of James Collinson's Answering the Emigrant's Letter . This preoccupation with sending or receiving missives can partly be explained by the reform of the postal system in 1840, when the penny post was established and made delivery both reliable and cheap. One result was that the valentine-making industry flourished in the 1840s and 1850s, as embossed, hand-punched, lace, folding, and other kinds of sentimental as well as comic valentines became immensely popular. In 1863, Nicol had painted a work of the same title, in which a pretty peasant woman in a humble interior leisurely reads a message from an assumed admirer. However, in the present work the young man appears to have received a letter and not a commercial card. It was generally more usual for men to send valentines than to receive them, and the young boy in ragged clothes and over-sized shoes is clearly overwhelmed by the contents of the letter and astonished at the sight of an image of a mule on the treasured 'valentine'. Outside a real mule or donkey stands in the doorway. In the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch genre, there are various emblematic elements to the still life depicted on the table: the eggs allude to fertility and aphrodisiacs, the spilled milk and open jugs and jars imply that a deed has already been committed and meanwhile the dog causes disruption and disorder as he steals food from the table.