Description
Stanhope Alexander Forbes, RA (British, 1857-1947)
The Bridge signed and dated 'STANHOPE A FORBES/1888.' (lower right)oil on canvas61 x 76.5cm (24 x 30 1/8in).
Provenance: Possibly John Maddocks Esq. Collection, Bradford1.Private collection, UK. ExhibitedLondon, New English Art Club, 1889, no. 95.LiteraturePall Mall Gazette 'Extra', 1889, p. 91 (illustrated).'New English Art Club', The Academy, 27 April 1889, p. 294.'The New English Art Club', The Daily News, 16 April 1889, p. 3.'Our Ladies' London Letter', Irish Society, 27 April 1889, p. 269.'Art in May, Exhibitions of the Month', The Magazine of Art, p. xxix.'In the Picture Galleries', The World, 24 April 1889, n. p. Butler Wood, 'The Maddocks Collection at Bradford', The Magazine of Art, 1891, p. 306.Wilfrid Meynell, 'Mr Stanhope Forbes ARA', The Art Journal, 1892, p. 65 (illustrated p. 69).Mrs Lionel Birch, Stanhope A Forbes ARA and Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes ARWS, 1906, Cassell & Co, p. 36.C Lewis Hind, Stanhope Forbes RA, 1911, Art Journal Christmas Number, p. 11 (illustrated p. 13).Elizabeth Knowles, Stanhope Forbes, Father of the Newlyn School, Sansom & Company, Bristol, Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, 2017, p. 114.Boys and girls are fishing on the old bridge at Street-an-Nowan between Penzance and Newlyn as an angler adjusts his line. A carthorse crosses the bridge and a sailor in uniform, home on furlough, is talking to a woman – his presence, a reminder that the sons of fishermen from little coastal towns like Newlyn supplied a goodly proportion of the country's naval ratings. This microcosm of daily life was however, less serene than it appears. As he was painting the picture in July 1888, Stanhope Forbes reported in a letter that there were, '... fishermen getting up a fight nearby when I was working and I had all the village round me. My picture blew over in the mud and an angler caught 3 fine trout right under my nose as I was struggling with my bridge'.2 Despite these upsets, his composition was eventually completed and set aside for the forthcoming spring when it would be shown at the New English Art Club. It was a crucial exhibition for him. In 1888 he was perplexed about the direction the club appeared to be taking and was appalled at the prominence given to Walter Sickert's 'tawdry, vulgar' music-hall subject matter. 'Unless' he wrote, 'the Whistler influence is stamped out the club will go to the bad'.3 His worst fears were confirmed when The Bridge appeared in a show, the reviews of which were dominated by Sickert's Collins Music Hall, Islington Green, N (destroyed). Even though The Bridge was a picture that was 'broadly handled ... in which the figures are naturally grouped, and the stonework and reflections in the water are finely rendered', it would be his last submission to the club.4 Forbes's hostility to what he regarded as the more outrageous tendencies in British painting was based on a conviction that the artist should seek for beauty in the ordinary. In a recent manifesto, on 'The Treatment of Modern Life in Art', he had declared that a painter's 'best endeavour' was 'the representation of events in which we ourselves might take part' and while the folk he found in Cornish villages were 'not Greek gods', they were 'often handsome', and worthy of representation.5 The record of everyday lived experience was an ideal derived from Jules Bastien-Lepage, an artist idolized by Forbes as 'the great B-P'.6 Indeed his championship of the French painter obliged him to set Naturalism and 'democratic' legibility against the emerging trend towards Neo-Impressionism. While he was not exclusively anti-modernist, his allegiance to these ideals had recently been confirmed by a visit to the Exposition Universelle in Paris during the time The Bridge was on show in the New English.7 He declared to a reporter that Lepage was, in his opinion,'...absolutely the greatest of all modern painters – a faith too, which daily gains ground. I am just back from Paris, from seeing, from worshipping, his glorious Jeanne d'Arc'.8 We need look no further than The Bridge for the exemplification of these ideals. They express themselves in strict tonal control across the entire picture plane, sharp delineation of space and the structures that define it, and breadth in the handling of forms. Although unstated in 1889, Forbes must have been convinced that his fortunes lay elsewhere than with the rebel group. His main effort was concentrated on The Health of the Bride (Tate), currently one of the centre-pieces of the Royal Academy. It was widely reported that had Henry Tate not got there first, this picture would have been purchased by the trustees of the Chantrey Bequest for the National Gallery of British Art.9 Within a short time the leader of the Newlyn School would become an Associate of the Royal Academy. Thereafter the bridge at Street-an-Nowan became a favoured motif, Harold Harvey painting it on at least two occasions when the buildings had been redeveloped, and Forbes himself returning to it in 1925 (fig 1). Undoubtedly these are fine examples of later Newlyn styles, but neither is so tightly orchestrated as their predecessor. In the present lot>, the eye follows its line but is conscious that it is punctuated by the ducks on the bank at the left and the sailor on the right. For all its 'naturalness', throughout Forbes's entire oeuvre there is not a more remarkable composition. Mr Maddocks, the picture's first owner, had obtained a masterpiece.10We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in cataloguing this lot. 1 Mrs Lionel Birch 1906, p.36 indicates that the small 'delightful little picture' of 'boys fishing from the parapet' of the bridge at Street-an-Nowan was sold to 'Mr Maddocks'. The picture does not however appear in the Maddocks sale on 30 April 1910 and may have been sold at the time of his move to London c. 1900; see note 10.2 Letter dated 23 July 1888, Hyman Kreitman Archive, Tate.3 Letter dated 31 March 1888, Hyman Kreitman Archive, Tate4 'The New English Art Club', The Daily News, 16 April 1889, p. 3. 5 Transactions of the National Association for the Advancement of Art and its Application to Industry, Birmingham Meeting MDCCCXC, 1891, (London, 22 Albemarle Street), pp. 126-7 6 Letter dated 23 October 1881, Hyman Kreitman Archive, Tate. 7 He did share common ground with Sickert in his admiration for Degas, but his hostility to Whistler may in part have been motivated by his wife's admiration for the American expatriate. 8 Anon, 'The Newlyn School – An Interview with Mr Stanhope Forbes', Western Morning News, 7 June 1889, p. 59 Ibid; Tate's acquisition made it possible for the Chantrey trustees to turn their attention to Henry Scott Tuke's All Hands to the Pumps 1889 (Tate). 10 See note 1; Butler Wood (Magazine of Art, 1891, p. 306) refers to the picture as The Anglers and comments on its 'quiet key' and 'soft brushwork', concluding that 'as a piece of good outdoor effect it is very satisfactory'.
