ARTHUR HUGHES (BRITISH, 1830-1915)
ARTHUR HUGHES (BRITISH, 1830-1915)
ARTHUR HUGHES (BRITISH, 1830-1915)
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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTON
ARTHUR HUGHES (BRITISH, 1830-1915)

Uncertainty

細節
ARTHUR HUGHES (BRITISH, 1830-1915)
Uncertainty
signed and dated 'ARTHUR HUGHES. 1878.' (lower left) and further signed and inscribed '**certainty-/Arthur Hughes/Wandle Bank/Wallington/Surrey' (on a partial label attached to the backboard)
oil on canvas
39 x 26 in. (99.1 x 66.1 cm.)
來源
Purchased from the artist by an unknown patron, April 1878.
Sylvester Zefferini Poli (1859-1937), and by descent to his granddaughter.
Miss Poli; Applebrook Auctions, Brookfield, Connecticut, 22 September 2005, lot 120.
with Christopher Wood, London, from whom purchased by the present owner.
出版
Academy Notes, 25 May 1878, p. 470.
The Times, 31 May 1878, p. 4.
Art Journal, London, 1878, pp. 176-7.
E. Chesneau, La Peinture anglaise, Paris, 1882, p. 201.
C.E. Clement & L. Hutton (eds), Artists of the Nineteenth Century and their Works, Boston, 1884, p. 372.
G.H. Shepherd, A Short History of the British School of Painting, London, 1881, p. 148.
E. Chesneau, 'Peintures Anglais Contemporains', L'Art, Paris, 1894, p. 399.
L. Roberts, Arthur Hughes: His Life and Works, Woodbridge, 1997, pp. 188-9, 285, no. 157.
展覽
London, Royal Academy, 1878, no. 602.

榮譽呈獻

Alastair Plumb
Alastair Plumb Senior Specialist, Head of Sale, European Art

拍品專文

This touching picture would have resonated deeply with Victorian audiences, and commemorates a tradition still observed today. In a distant room, a suitor is asking an elderly gentleman for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The daughter listens expectantly, visible to us but not them, her apprehension calmed by the presence of an adoring hound. The scene is bathed in soft afternoon light, and her dress suggests autumn to add pathos to the scene. A ticking grandfather clock further marks the passage of time. The black and white tiled floor that leads the eye through the picture recalls the interiors of Dutch 17th century painting and the picture exudes the stillness and serenity of a Vermeer. Despite the title, the viewer is left in no doubt that the outcome will be a happy one.
Before the introduction of the moving image, audiences loved to comment on and interpret the nuances of narrative suggested by painters in scenes such as this. Hughes had made his name through depicting the romantic life of couples in pictures such as April Love (1855-6, Tate, London) and The Long Engagement (1854-9, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery). As a friend and associate of the Pre-Raphaelites (although never officially a brother), he observed Millais’s success in depicting the heightened emotion between couples in The Black Brunswicker (1860, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and The Huguenot (1852, Private Collection).
The picture’s theatrical qualities were appreciated by an early owner Sylvester Zefferini Poli (1859-1937) who by 1916 became the most successful theatre owner in the United States, with more than thirty premises in his portfolio. Hughes would have had a willing model to act as the lead protagonist. The head is that of his daughter who married within a few years of this picture being painted. Hughes’ imagination perhaps pre-empted his son in law’s interview.

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