Lot 48: In the Fields

Henry Herbert La Thangue, R.A. (1859-1929) In the Fields oil on canvas 35 x 20 7/8 in. (88.9 x 53.1 cm.)

88.9 x 53.1 cm.

James Jebusa Shannon, by 1885, and by descent.

In the summer of 1883 two British art students, James Havard Thomas and Henry Herbert La Thangue, set off to explore la France profonde. They travelled south on the PLM, the Paris/Lyon/Marseille railway, but failed to reach the Mediterranean, disembarking in the Dauphiné, the fertile, fruit-growing region of the Rhone valley. La Thangue had spent two summers painting in Brittany where each of the most picturesque villages boasted its cluster of artists, but here was uncharted territory. The hot sun made it impossible at first to work in the open air and he painted in a shadowy interior a picture of a young woman spinning flax with a distaff and weighted spindle - a Jean-François Millet subject. But when he returned the following year, it was to embark upon a large canvas of reapers entitled In the Dauphiné (1884-5, private collection, sold in these Rooms, 26 November 2003; Fig 1). This would become the most controversial picture shown at the first exhibition of the New English Art Club in 1886 (for further information see K. McConkey, The New English, A History of the New English Art Club, 2006 (Royal Academy Publications), pp. 32-6). Although La Thangue claimed it was unfinished when shown, this sunlit scene became an archetype – a demonstration-piece in the broad ‘square-brush’ style that was de rigueur in the teaching ateliers. In his case, it was developed in smaller works, few of which have survived. In the Art Journal of 1893 J.S. Little declared that of the work of this period, the painter ‘destroyed practically everything’. The appearance of In the Fields therefore marks a significant moment in our understanding of the development of this epiphenomenon. It indicates the ‘impression’ of an encounter in which the eye travels instantly to the focal point of the picture – the heads of the passing fieldworkers. These are likely to be the principal models for In the Dauphiné passing what appears to be a hay bale in the lower left quarter of the canvas. Given what we can see in later works such as Tucking the Rick (lot 48) it seems strange that the painter would not have been more explicit in noting the surface texture of this important foreground insertion. And since the area was well-known for its cloth production, its soft contours suggest that it could possibly be a bale of ‘scutched’ flax fibre left to dry (See R.B. Forrester MA, The Cloth Industry in France, A Report to the Electors of the Gartside Scholarship, Manchester, 1921). Nimes – some 55 miles from Donzère – was the ancient centre of heavy cotton production known as tissu de Nimes, from which the modern blue-dyed fabric known as ‘denim’, takes its name. Significantly, the peasants in the present canvas, and in In the Dauphiné, are dressed in garments made from this cloth. Even the man’s shirt is likely to be of a lighter, cooler silk and cotton fabric, also developed in the region, which, worn loosely, provided protection from the strong sunlight. For La Thangue the experience at Donzère was character-forming. It set the pattern of working en plein air which ultimately drew him back to southern France in the early years of the 20th Century. However, when he returned to London, the young painter rented one of the Trafalgar Studios in Manresa Road, Chelsea, where, along with other young artists, one of his companions was James Jebusa Shannon (see lots 49-54). At this point La Thangue was hailed as the leader of the ‘Square Brush School’, and as Morley Roberts noted, ‘…among those who owe much to La Thangue must be reckoned JJ Shannon …’ (Roberts, 1889, p. 73). It is likely that a friendship developed between the two, since La Thangue stored some of his early pictures in Shannon’s studio when he left London to work, first at South Walsham, then at Rye and finally at Horsey Mere in Norfolk. Shannon’s In My Studio, one of his two exhibits in the first New English exhibition shows La Thangue’s In the Dauphiné in the background. Somewhere, among these assorted canvases was In the Fields. KMc.