Lot 49: George Bernard O'Neill (British, 1828-1917) Reaping Time

George Bernard O'Neill (British, 1828-1917) Reaping Time
Reaping Time
signed 'GBONeill' (lower right); signed and inscribed with artist's address (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
77 x 99cm (30 5/16 x 39in).

Footnotes

• Exhibited
  London, Royal Academy, 1878, no. 1013.
  
  The ninth of fifteen children, George Bernard O'Neill was born on 17th July 1828. In the late 1830's his family left Dublin and settled in England where his father had a job as an Ordnance storekeeper at the Woolwich Arsenal. George enrolled at the RA schools and first exhibited there in 1847. This was the first of an unbroken run of Royal Academy exhibits right up until 1893, bar 1858, the year after he was married to Emma Stuart Callcott, the cousin of the artist John Callcott Horsley, RA.
  
  In 1860 the O'Neills moved out of London, spending the summer months in Cranbrook, to join Frederick Daniel Hardy, who had settled there six years earlier. Within relatively easy reach of the metropolis, due to the new railway, this small village in Kent provided the perfect combination of rural subject matter, clean air and the chance for this group of painters to form a closely knit, almost familial colony. O'Neill leased 'Old Wisley' and the artists shared a studio on the High Street. They were soon to be joined by Thomas Webster, RA; George Henry Boughton and Augustus Mulready were also frequent visitors. Using mainly family, friends and local models, O'Neill produced narrative works which tended to be sentimental but proved popular with the Victorian public.
  
  In Reaping Time, which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1878, the farmer or possibly grain merchant is testing the quality of the corn which has been harvested from the field beyond. The sample has been brought to him by the young girl who has discarded her hat, having come in from the field. This age old ritual is given modern relevance by the copy of the Kentish Express which lies open, and behind more everyday activities take place: a mother suckles her baby, an old lady feeds chickens and in the room behind the figures on the bench a customer prepares to have a shave.
  
  The setting for this picture is almost certainly Old Wisley. The distinctive windows with diamond panes appear in many of the artist's works of this period, and the device of the open door allowing an additional narrative beyond the main event was a common device frequently employed in genre pictures at this time.
  
  O'Neill continued to divide his time between London and Kent, and counted amongst his friends Whistler who he supported during the infamous libel case against John Ruskin in 1878. He died in London on 23rd September 1917.