Lot Essay
This is a later reinterpretation of motifs first employed by Hughes in his picture Silver and Gold, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864 and sold in these Rooms on 25 October 1991, lot 50. The girl and the old woman walking and talking confidentially in a garden, the sundial, the peacock and the scythe, had all appeared in the earlier work. The quotation on the label on the back of our picture reads in full:
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
The lines are taken from one of Shakespeare's sonnets (LX) and had already been used for a picture entitled Vanity which Hughes exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878, when it was described in a review by William Michael Rossetti as 'a composition of several figures in which a very aged dame, a child, and a peacock, are prominent, the costume being of the Elizabethan date'. This account and the recurrence of the lines of poetry strongly suggest that the 1878 picture was yet another re-working of the 'Silver and Gold' theme.
In addition to the similarities between our picture and Silver and Gold, there are also major differences, the figures and other details being rearranged and reduced in relation to their setting in the later work. As Leonard Roberts has suggested, this new conception may owe something to Fred Walker's famous painting The Harbour of Refuge (Tate Gallery), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1872 and presented to the National Gallery in 1893.
The picture was probably acquired from Hughes by Susan Lushington, the youngest daughter of Judge Vernon Lushington, who was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Hughes had painted Lushington's wife and daughters in a picture entitled The Home Quartet, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1883, and Susan was to acquire several of his pictures after the turn of the century. Her sister Margaret lived with her husband Stephen Massingberd at Gunby Hall, near Burgh-le-Marsh in Lincolnshire, and after her death in 1906 the house was taken over by Susan. Hughes visited her there, and the picture was almost certainly painted in the garden. The house now belongs to the National Trust, and its gardens remain much the same today.
We are grateful ot Leonard Roberts for his help in preparing this entry.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
The lines are taken from one of Shakespeare's sonnets (LX) and had already been used for a picture entitled Vanity which Hughes exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878, when it was described in a review by William Michael Rossetti as 'a composition of several figures in which a very aged dame, a child, and a peacock, are prominent, the costume being of the Elizabethan date'. This account and the recurrence of the lines of poetry strongly suggest that the 1878 picture was yet another re-working of the 'Silver and Gold' theme.
In addition to the similarities between our picture and Silver and Gold, there are also major differences, the figures and other details being rearranged and reduced in relation to their setting in the later work. As Leonard Roberts has suggested, this new conception may owe something to Fred Walker's famous painting The Harbour of Refuge (Tate Gallery), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1872 and presented to the National Gallery in 1893.
The picture was probably acquired from Hughes by Susan Lushington, the youngest daughter of Judge Vernon Lushington, who was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Hughes had painted Lushington's wife and daughters in a picture entitled The Home Quartet, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1883, and Susan was to acquire several of his pictures after the turn of the century. Her sister Margaret lived with her husband Stephen Massingberd at Gunby Hall, near Burgh-le-Marsh in Lincolnshire, and after her death in 1906 the house was taken over by Susan. Hughes visited her there, and the picture was almost certainly painted in the garden. The house now belongs to the National Trust, and its gardens remain much the same today.
We are grateful ot Leonard Roberts for his help in preparing this entry.