Lot 10: HENRY HERBERT LA THANGUE, R.A. (1859-1929) PORTRAIT OF A GIRL - THE STRIPED BLOUSE

signed, oil on canvas 56 by 46 cm.; 22 by 18 in. Painted at Cancale, a fishing village on the Brittany coast near St. Malo. La Thangue spent the summer of 1881 painting here with Stanhope Forbes and returned with him the following year to Quimperle. These trips produced the earliest plein-air pictures from each artist and signalled the development of the square brush stroke which was so characteristic of their best work in the 1880s (see The Studio, vol.IX, December, 1896, pp.168-171). The young Bretonne of the present picture was also the model for The Boat Builder's Yard, La Thangue's most important picture of 1881, exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882 and now in the Collection of the National Maritime Museum. The first owner of The Striped Blouse was the wealthy JP and Councillor John Maddocks. Maddocks was one of a small group of Bradford industrialists which included Herbert Mitchell and Isaac Smith whose enthusiasm for painting had led them to build up substantial collections of modern British and French art and to befriend the artists themselves. Stanhope Forbes noted in a letter to his mother in 1881 that La Thangue had refused an offer from Maddocks to take all his pictures for the next two years for a fixed income (see Caroline Fox and Francis Greenacre, Painting in Newlyn 1880-1930, catalogue to the exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1985, p.102 under note 18). John Maddocks nonetheless owned several of La Thangue's paintings as well as important pictures by L'Hermitte, Clausen and Stanhope Forbes. An exhibition of 230 of his pictures was held at Bradford City Art Gallery in 1891 (see Butler Wood, The Maddocks Collection at Bradford, The Magazine of Art, 1891, pp.304-6). Provenance: John Maddocks, Bradford Sir Thomas Jaffrey, Bt., his sale Christies, 3rd April, 1925, lot 85, 14gns. to Sampson Christies, 19th May, 1972, lot 152 bt. Fine Art Society, London Eric Garrott, aquired from the above Fine Art Society, 1982, bt. by the present owner in 1984 Exhibited: (possibly) Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1882, no.333 as A Portrait; (probably) Bradford City Art Gallery, The Maddocks Collection, 1891; Aberdeen Art Gallery, The Collection of Paintings made by the late Sir Thomas Jaffrey, Bt., L.D. Chairman Aberdeen Art Gallery, 1928-1951, 1955, no.60.