Lot 32: - Robert Huskisson , 1819-1861 the fairy court oil on canvas

oil on canvas

measurements note 47.5 by 51 cm., 18¾ by 20¼ in.

PROPERTY FROM AN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
This picture may depict a scene inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, a text from which Huskisson painted several scenes. However it does not appear to depict a specific scene from the play. The scene appears to be of a nocturnal fairy court lit by a pool of moonlight, with a male fairy being held captive by guards holding lanterns of glow-worms whilst a female fairy pleads on his behalf to an enthroned king and queen on a toadstool dias. It is conceivable that the scene depicts the mother of the changeling child emploring Titania not to allow Oberon to take her son as a henchman. In Shakespeare's play the changeling was an Indian infant but it is possible that Huskisson adapted the details for artistic purposes. The figures in the present picture bear a strong resemblance to those found in Huskisson's There Sleeps Titania (Sotheby's, 27 June 2006, lot 14), The Midsummer Night's Fairies (Tate) and Come unto these Golden Sands (private collection).

Robert Huskisson, was born in Nottingham, and seems to have been trained as an artist by his father who was a provincial portrait painter, Henry Huskinson (as the family name had previously been spelt), and was living in London, sharing accommodation with his brother Leonard, by the late 1830s. Although Huskisson remains a shadowy figure, known principally for his delightful fairy subjects, mention should be made of his (if it is in fact by the same Robert Huskisson) oil subject Lord Northwick's Picture Gallery at Thirlstaine House (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven), which is dated to c.1846-7, and which shows extraordinary skill in the replication of the contents of the interior. However, S.C. Hall's prediction of Huskisson's destiny proved illusory; for some reason he ceased to exhibit in 1854, perhaps because of ill health, and in 1861, aged only forty-two, he died. No obituary was published in the Art Journal (successor to the Art Union), so it must be assumed that Huskisson had even by that time sunk into obscurity. His modern reputation owes much to the pioneering investigations of the late Jeremy Maas. Huskisson was represented by four works in the Royal Academy's 1997 exhibition Victorian Fairy Painting, the first of these being the Tate's The Midsummer Night's Fairies.