Lot Essay
Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1853, this is the first of a series of paintings in which Redgrave explored the theme of 'The Children in the Wood'. It was followed by two pictures shown at the RA in 1860, both called The Children in the Wood but one subtitled The Morning, the other The Evening. Morning was formerly in the Forbes Magazine Collection (loc.cit.), and appeared in these Rooms on 21 June 1985, lot 53. (It is confused with the present picture in the catalogue of the Redgrave Exhibition, 1988, pp.76-7, where a discussion of The Lost Path is illustrated with a mis-titled reproduction of Morning.) Evening is untraced, but two further treatments of the theme are known: The Children in the Wood (1862, Wolverhampton Art Gallery; Redgrave Exh., 1988, no.109, repr. in cat.), a more dramatic account in which the children are seen at the mercy of hired assassins, and Strayed Lambs (RA 1863; Phillips, 21 March 1989, lot 140).
All these paintings gave Redgrave the opportunity to paint the woodland effects at which he excelled, and in a manner which has often been seen as Pre-Raphaelite. The Lost Path was much admired when it was exhibited in 1853, and the critics invariably discussed it in these terms. The Illustrated London News observed that 'the trees and herbage are picked out with all the care and nicety of the pre-Raffaellite (sic) or Modern Antique school.' 'We cannot speak too highly of this work', enthused the Art Journal, 'it is the most successful which the painter has of late years exhibited. The lower herbage, weeds and wild flowers, are really marvellously painted; the work is everywhere bright and harmonious in colour, and the story is very clearly narrated.' As for the Athenaeum, it preferred the background to the figures. 'Mr Redgrave's Lost Path will have many admirers; more, however, we suspect on account of the landscape than for the sake of "The Children in the Wood", who interpret the scene. A somewhat bolder handling would have been more appropriate than the over-delicate treatment of the children's limbs and faces ....; but the wood in which they are lost is painted with the hand of a master.'
All these paintings gave Redgrave the opportunity to paint the woodland effects at which he excelled, and in a manner which has often been seen as Pre-Raphaelite. The Lost Path was much admired when it was exhibited in 1853, and the critics invariably discussed it in these terms. The Illustrated London News observed that 'the trees and herbage are picked out with all the care and nicety of the pre-Raffaellite (sic) or Modern Antique school.' 'We cannot speak too highly of this work', enthused the Art Journal, 'it is the most successful which the painter has of late years exhibited. The lower herbage, weeds and wild flowers, are really marvellously painted; the work is everywhere bright and harmonious in colour, and the story is very clearly narrated.' As for the Athenaeum, it preferred the background to the figures. 'Mr Redgrave's Lost Path will have many admirers; more, however, we suspect on account of the landscape than for the sake of "The Children in the Wood", who interpret the scene. A somewhat bolder handling would have been more appropriate than the over-delicate treatment of the children's limbs and faces ....; but the wood in which they are lost is painted with the hand of a master.'