Lot 257: HENRY HERBERT LA THANGUE R.A. (BRITISH, 1859-1929)

HENRY HERBERT LA THANGUE R.A. (BRITISH, 1859-1929) An Alpine Village, St. Jeannet, France, signed 'H. H. LATHANGUE' lower left, oil on canvas, 21" x 24" (see illustration) Provenance: Purchased by Moses Nightingale Esq., (possibly from the Leicester Galleries, London, 1914); thence by descent Exhibited: London, Leicester Galleries, Exhibition of Paintings by H. H. La Thangue, R.A., April 1914, no. 22 Brighton, City Art Gallery and Museum, Memorial Exhibition of Works by the Late H. H. La Thangue R. A., September 1930, no. 27 Literature: Walter Sickert, 'Mr La Thangue's Paintings', The New Age, vol XV, no. 1, 7 May 1914, p.18 Anon, Watercolours and Oils at Hazeldene, Crawley, Sussex, 1919, no. 121 as An Alpine Village, St. Jeannett (sic), France, 1912 Osbert Sitwell ed., A Free House! Being the Writings of Walter Richard Sickert, 1947 (MacMillan), p. 272 Anna Gruetzner Robins, Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art, 2002, (Oxford University Press), pp. 364-365 La Thangue was captivated by the p ct resque hill villages of Provence and Liguria. St Jeannet, between Vence and Nice was a particular favourite, being painted from a number of vantage points. Nightingale owned at least six works painted in and around the village, two representing rose gardens. In concept, An Alpine Village reiterates La Thangue's earlier December in Provence, (fig 1, unlocated) shown at the Royal Academy in 1901. Both works portray groves lying at the foot of hillside villages. In the later work, he strategically places the tower of the church Saint-Jean-Baptiste, c.1666, as the focal point of the composition. St Jeannet is built on the slope leading to a precipitous coral crag which La Thangue's viewpoint omits. Like Bormes, this ancient village was renowned for its flower and fruit cultivation - particularly its fine local grapes (Guide to the Riviera from HyÞres to Viareggio, c. 1930, Ward Lock, p. 82). Edwardian botanists who frequented the area admired its rare flora (Comerfield Casey, Riviera Nature Notes, 1903, pp. 16 - 3) and for Captain Richardson, writing in 1927, St Jeannet was simply 'a centre of bucolic bliss' (Richardson, 1927, p. 82). A further work, An Aqueduct, (fig 2) probably dating from the 1920s, continues the idea of foreground figure related to background village. The present canvas, is one of a number painted by La Thangue, not all of which have been identified. His painting expeditions along the Riviera into Liguria, Lombardy and across to Venice, cannot be securely documented and landscape locations often remain obscure. In the present instance however, he discovered a beautiful medieval village which had attracted artists since the seventeenth century. The village's name may not have been known to Walter Sickert when he singled out An Alpine Village as one of his selection of favourite works from La Thangue's Leicester Galleries show. In an article written for The New Age journal in May 1914 he wrote, An exhibition is like a libraryàtake down one of the volumes at random, and settle down comfortabl to read it, and you may light upon a paradise. Take any one of the following picturesàAn Alpine Village (22)àA Sussex Hayfield (41)àTake it home and hang it up in a room where you can see it at breakfast, or while you are dressing. Hang it on a wall at right angles to a window, and more than halfway away from the window. Give it time to convey its message, and you will see how remote that message is from all the din of the aesthetic discussions of the moment. It has taken the whole history of art to produce modern painting, and it has taken the painter more than half a century to develop his skill in self-expression. Such canvases contain a message that will speak to many generations to come, and will certainly last us in pleasure, entertainment, stimulus, for the rest of our short lives. Such pictures were classics. The critics who attacked La Thangue were simply frightened of being despised by Henry Tonks, DS MacColl, Clive Bell or Roger Fry. Yet works like An Alpine Village stood outside the 'din' of 'ae thetic discussions' and were beyond 'the veriest tyro of criticism'. Sickert's eloquent endorsement may well have reinforced Moses Nightingale's confidence in forming his collection.