拍品专文
Professor Kenneth McConkey writes of the present work 'The picture is clearly consonant with [Lavery's] rustic naturalistic paintings produced on his first short visit to Grez-sur-Loing in 1883. The title, drawn from Sing a Song of Sixpence helps to explain the presence in the foreground of a blackbird which has been observed by the young woman in the painting.
As an upright composition with this foreground motif, the picture conforms to the type which Lavery later utilised in the untraced Beg Sir! of 1885 which shows a young woman in the middle distance tempting a terrier (McConkey, 1993, pl.38). The background of The Maid was in the Garden is very similar to that of Painting on a Summer's Day (McConkey, 1993, pl.34). All of this places it comfortably into the sequence of Grez pictures produced in 1883 and 1884. The early exhibition reference of 1883 indicates that it was brought back from France by the artist after his first visit'.
(Private Correspondence, 1997).
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.
As an upright composition with this foreground motif, the picture conforms to the type which Lavery later utilised in the untraced Beg Sir! of 1885 which shows a young woman in the middle distance tempting a terrier (McConkey, 1993, pl.38). The background of The Maid was in the Garden is very similar to that of Painting on a Summer's Day (McConkey, 1993, pl.34). All of this places it comfortably into the sequence of Grez pictures produced in 1883 and 1884. The early exhibition reference of 1883 indicates that it was brought back from France by the artist after his first visit'.
(Private Correspondence, 1997).
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.