Lot 121: frederick Ifold , fl. 1846-1867 the watercress seller oil on canvas, arched top

signed and dated l.r.: F. Ifold/ 1867 oil on canvas, arched top

measurements note 46 by 30.5 cm.; 18 by 12 in.

Christie's, London, 8 May 1981, lot 125;
Christopher Wood, London, where bought by Lady Scott, 30 March 1982 for £2,000

Ifold's work is rare. He only exhibited four works at the Royal Academy from 1847 to 1867 and the present subject was the last of his paintings to appear there. The themes of these are varied, being an Old Testament subject, a scene from The Tempest, a landscape on the Isle of Wight, and the present portrait of an itinerant street trader.

This delightful young girl selling watercress would have been a familiar sight in mid 19th century London. In his highly informative book Toilers in London, by One of the Crowd, the author James Greenwood describes the selling of watercress, having encountered a disillusioned pedlar who had been sold poor stock early one morning. The watercress sellers converged at dawn at Farrington Market in the city to buy their daily supply which had arrived from the picking streams in Hampshire. Wholesale a basketful might cost just a few pence and the sellers, who varied in age, might hope to make between eight or nine pence a day, just enough to survive in a Dickensian world. The slightly worn clothes and the ill-fitting hat, coupled with the steady stoical look, suggest that the young lady in the painting, is despite her youth, not new to this trade.