Lot 257: f - HENRY HERBERT LA THANGUE, R.A. 1859-1929

signed l.r.: H. H. LA THANGUE

oil on canvas

56 by 69 cm. ; 22 by 27 in.

Royal Academy, 1900, no. 199

Bought by the present owners, c. 1950

The rediscovery of Dawn, the whereabouts of which had not been known for over half a century, brings to light an important painting in La Thangue's later series of pictures depicting labour in the Sussex fields. A young woman bends to pick mushrooms in a field in the first light of morning, whilst another figure in the distance reciprocates her action.

1900 was an important year for La Thangue as several of his pictures were exhibited in the British section of the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Paintings by members of the group of artists associated with British Naturalism, such as Lavery and Clausen, La Thangue and Forbes, were hung with High Victorian paintings by Burne Jones, Millais and Leighton and progressive art by Degas, Renoir, Gaugin, Picasso and Matisse. The connection between La Thangue's work at this period and that of the Impressionists, was strong and can be seen in the shared interest of dappled light which recalls the work of Renoir. The interest in rural traditions and strenuous physical labour is reminiscent of Gaugin and ultimately can be traced back to the influence of Jean François Millet. The Impressionistic quality of the brushwork has been described by Kenneth McConkey thus; 'In all his work it is possible to see a regular square stroke laid down in opaque impastose pigment, much as it is described by Morley Roberts in 1889 when he hailed La Thangue as the leader of the "Square Brush School".'It is a technique', Roberts wrote, 'which puts paint on canvas in a particular way... those who practice it in its simplest form leave the brush marks and do not smooth away the evidence of method, thus sometimes insisting on the way the picture is painted perhaps at the sacrifice of subtleties in the subject.' (Kenneth McConkey, A Painter's Harvest; Works by Henry Herbert La Thangue, R.A., 1859-1929, exhibition catalogue for Oldham Art Gallery, 1978, pg. 10)

The choice of the title Dawn for a painting exhibited in 1900 was not accidental and the idea of the birth of a new day had a symbolic significance, in the same way as Herbert Draper's classical figure of The Gates of Dawn and Alfred East's A Morning Moon also exhibited at the Academy in 1900. The figure of the mushroom picker appears to derive from the pose of another painting symbolic of rebirth and fertility, Burne-Jones Marsh Marigold and there is an reverential look back to Millet's famous painting of field workers, The Gleaners. La Thangue had painted his own The Gleaners (Aberdeen Art Gallery) in 1897 and in 1899 a female figure in the background of Cider Apples (Art Gallery of New South Wales) anticipated the pose of the young woman in Dawn.

La Thangue's other two Royal Academy exhibits of 1900, The Ploughboy (Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum) and The Water-Plash (Victoria Art Gallery, Bath) are well known from municipal galleries and have been identified as demonstrating La Thangue's move towards a looser style in his mature work; 'La Thangue's exhibits at the Royal Academy in 1900, illustrated his development of a more impressionistic style and interest in analysing various atmospheric sunlight effects.' (Adrian Jenkins, Painters and Peasants; Henry La Thangue and British Rural Naturalism 1880-1905, exhibition catalogue for Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, 2000, pg. 152).