Description
FROM A LIGURIAN SPRING
99 by 83 cm.; 39 by 32 ½ in.
signed l.r.: H.H. LA THANGUE and titled on the stretcher FROM A LIGURIAN/ SPRING; further inscribed on the stretcher 'From a Ligurian Spring' and inscribed on an old label: H.H. La Thangue Esq ARA/ Selham Station
oil on canvas
PROVENANCE
MacConnal-Mason & Son, London;
Ronald Smolden, by 1978;
Exeter, Bearne's, 1 March 2000, lot 439;
Private collection
EXHIBITED
Royal Academy, 1904, no. 297;
Oldham Art Gallery, A Painter's Harvest: Works by Henry Herbert La Thangue, R.A. 1859-1929, November-December 1978, no. 23
LITERATURE
The Illustrated London News, 7 May 1904, p.688;
The Spectator, 30 April 1904, p. 696;
Royal Academy Pictures, 1904, repr. p. 137
NOTE
'It would be difficult to find a more conscientious, consistent, or industrious painter... The pioneer in this country of what is commonly called naturalism in Art - the School of Painting which had Bastien-Lepage for its apostle in France.' (J. S. Little, 'Henry Herbert la Thangue ARA', The Magazine of Art, 1904, p. 1)
La Thangue was particularly interested in capturing the rural traditions that were being rapidly consigned to history as mechanisation and mass farming began to destroy the picturesque nature of the countryside. 'The mere dream of the idealist suffice it to say that there are among us some who wish to cherish these scenes so clearly that to be banished from them, condemned to pass our days in witches' cauldrons of vulgar vice, meretricious glitter. And sordid activity... is to be doomed to a living death, spiritually considered; to be, in fact, cheated of life itself. To the nature worshipper, then, the work of such men as Henry Herbert la Thangue makes a most forceful appeal.' (ibid Little, p. 2) Although la Thangue painted the rural idylls he sought in Norfolk and Sussex, it was not until he travelled to the Mediterranean, firstly in Provence and later at Liguria, that he found the simple peasant lifestyle that he had wanted to paint his whole career. It was in France and Italy that he painted a 'series of work dealing with the loves and fortunes of the sons and daughters of the soil, painted in their natural environment of beasts and fowls, field and farm.' (ibid Little, p. 3)
The Ligurian coast lies on the fringe of north-western Italy close to the border with France. The fertile soil and warm climate of the Alpine foothills at Liguria were clad with groves of olives and oranges and fields of flowers grown for perfume. It was along this idyllic coast that la Thangue found inspiration for a delightful series of paintings in the early twentieth century. As with the earlier paintings made in Sussex, la Thangue took his subjects from the reality of the lives of the Ligurian peasants, the farm-girls, goatherds and fruit pickers. Bathed in dappled sunlight and coloured by the sun-baked landscape, the paintings are inhabited by people and animals which are not glorified or artificially posed but appear to be going about their lives unaware of being observed by the keen eye of an observant artist.
La Thangue 'discovered' Liguria following a series of visits to Provence between 1901 and 1903 where his paintings became essays in dappled, refracted sunlight and concerned with the rural traditions of the French peasants. He found in Provence, and later in Liguria, that the congenial rural way of life was still strong, whilst in the English counties it was waning with the increased reliance upon mechanisation. Here tourism had failed to spoil the rural idyll and although a few hotels had opened in the hill towns and villages along the coast, there was little effect upon the farms and plantations.
Unlike many painters and travellers who passed through Liguria on their way from the French Riviera to the artistic centres of Rome, Naples, Florence or Venice la Thangue lingered in the countryside, taking his subjects from the rugged landscape and local people. La Thangue's first Ligurian subjects were exhibited in 1904, A Ligurian Cradle and From a Ligurian Spring offered here, in which a young girl rests momentarily from her work to refresh herself at a spring whilst another girl loads a mule with oranges. The same young model appears to have been used for both 1904 pictures and probably also for the figure of the little girl drinking from the torrents of A Ligurian Mill Race and Selling Oranges in Liguria, the subjects of his 1905 exhibits. La Thangue was fascinated and greatly inspired by the women who packed the fruit grown in the orchards and groves and the flowers dried for the perfume industry. Their traditional costumes and sun-tanned beauty added to the picturesque charm of the paintings in which the women are not idealised or caricatured. The subject of women and girls drinking from springs and wells was one which la Thangue painted on several occasions, A Provencal Fountain (Manchester City Art Gallery), Goats at a Fountain (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), Winter in Liguria (sold Christie's, 26 November 2003, lot 47), and A Ligurian Mill Race (unlocated). 'Since the traditional way of life for peasants was now even rarer than when La Thangue had first tackled rustic subjects, it appears that after the turn of the twentieth century he was happy to simply document life in the countryside around him. Having renounced a photographic analysis of his peasant figures, he concentrated increasingly on exploring the effects of light in his rustic themes.' (Adrian Jenkins, Painters and Peasants -- Henry La Thangue and British Rural Naturalism 1880-1905, 2000, pp. 142-143)
The present picture treated a similar subject to that painted a year earlier in France, A Provencal Spring (Bradford Art Galleries and Museum) in which a young girl also stops to drink from a babbling brook. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1904 From a Ligurian Spring was described by the Illustrated London News as 'the most beautiful of all' La Thangue's Ligurian pictures. Little shared the same sentiment regarding La Thangue's contemporary paintings when he wrote his article for the Magazine of Art in 1904, concluding the article thus; 'He has given us in a permanent form, and in a form that must always give delight to the aesthete, as it will supply material to the historian the local industries of the country. Such subjects as goat herding, orange growing, the culture of the violet, have employed his energies and improved his art. Such work as this surely deserves the highest honour... He may safely assume that his achievements will always be held in high esteem by posterity.' (ibid Little, p. 6)
