Lot 55: Helen Mabel Trevor (1831-1900) Race to the Bottom

Helen Mabel Trevor (1831-1900) Race to the Bottom of the Bowl Oil on canvas, 66 x 71cm (26 x 28'') Signed and dated 1892 Helen Mabel Trevor was born near Loughbrickland, Co Down. She attended the Royal Academy Schools in London in the late 1870s, and then the Académie Julian in Paris. She exhibited in Dublin, London and Paris, receiving 'honourable mention' in the Salon in 1898. She was a genre and portrait painter, who excelled at painting children, producing many charming, warm pictures of them throughout her life. As well as many urban scenes of Paris, she travelled to Brittany and Normandy from 1881, and kept a delightfully illustrated journal on her travels. After six years in Italy, from 1883 to 1889, she and her sister, Rose, returned to Paris. She resumed her visits to Brittany and added Cornwall to her regular itinerary but she had a particular empathy for Breton people, their customs and traditions. Here are two young chubby-cheeked children, and a black cat with an arched back. The girls are feeding themselves from a rough earthenware bowl, with a pewter spoon. They wear simple peasant clothing in earthy blues and greys, and close-fitting white bonnets. The older girl holds back to allow her little sister to dip her spoon into the dish. They are totally engrossed in their goûter. The square format frames the children engagingly. The painting is free and fluid with occasional touches of impasto, and there is a stong sense of tactility. These Breton children recur in Trevor's work two or three years later, when she painted Two Breton Girls, the same children, in school (shown in The Irish Impressionists exhibition in the National Gallery, 1984). Dr Niamh O'Sullivan, May 2012