Harold C. Harvey (1874-1941)
Harold C. Harvey (1874-1941)

Children sitting on a Wall

Details
Harold C. Harvey (1874-1941)
Children sitting on a Wall
signed and dated 'Harold Harvey. 18.' (lower right)
oil on canvas
32 x 25 in. (81.3 x 65.5 cm.)
Provenance
with The Leicester Galleries, London.

Lot Essay

Throughout the Great War, when it was forbidden by the authorities to paint landscapes showing aspects of the British coastline, Harold Harvey concentrated upon domestic interiors and outdoor scenes from which recognizable features were removed.1 The provincial middle class kitchens and drawing rooms, subjects of some of his finest works, reveal that even in the darkest days of the war, the sun still shone and everyday tasks were performed as usual. At the same time, children flew kites, picked blackberries or lounged in the sun. Although efforts were being made to record the Western Front, there was an equally strong belief that references to the seemingly ordinary, were the best way to re-assure those locked in conflict that their's remained an ideal way of life, worth fighting for.

To achieve this sense of a peaceful haven, Harvey had radically overhauled his style. The 'impressionist' tache that characterized his work up to 1912, gradually disappeared and by the time of his solo exhibition in 1918, when Children sitting on a wall may first have been shown, forms had become crisper and more clearly delineated.2 The monochrome cobalt sky, forming the backdrop of works such as The Kite and Summer Hours, both shown at the Royal Academy of 1917, is in accord with this new approach.

The grass-topped stone parapet which appears in the present work is also present in these two earlier examples. Other details such as the colourful paisley shawl, confirm that the present work is part of the same sequence.3 Typically the painter has pared down the composition to four significant elements. Two of these, stone parapet and solitary tree are enough to establish the spatial relationship between the two figures who watch the passer-by, as country children would. The boy is barefoot - probably by choice and not through poverty. Harvey's fluency was applauded when in October 1920 a writer in Colour magazine, noted that,

'In every picture the clear bright Cornish light is present, the same pleasure in definition, the same happiness in the use of clean colour, is visible. He is obviously interested in the thing itself, ie the concrete and ordinary significance of objects. He is a worshipper of light and colour...'4

In this, Harvey rivalled Laura Knight, whose A Boy and a Girl sitting on a Wall (Private Collection), dates from the last years of the war. Like Knight, he moved swiftly to reintroduce landscape elements in paintings such as The Gate, Spring 1919 (Private Collection). However having arrived at this plateau in his work, Harvey was reluctant to leave it, as works like Blackberry Gatherers, 1921 (sold Christie's, 8 March 1990) make clear. Figures, as in Children sitting on a wall, are presented parallel to the picture plane, on a headland against the sky. And throughout the twenties, he, as much as any of his contemporaries, sustained the Cornish idyll as one of the principal pillars of Englishness.

We are grateful to Kenneth McConkey for providing the above catalogue entry.

1 Harvey did not completely abandon landscape backgrounds at this time however, where they occur, they no longer contain detailed information. In any case, by 1917, after three years of trench warfare, the threat of invasion had receded.

2 Peter Ridson and Pauline Sheppard, Harold Harvey, 2001, (Sansom and Co), p. 91-7.

3 This accent of bright red and yellow appears in other works of the period, such as The Blackberry Gatherer and Summer Hoeing (both 1917, both Private Collections).

4 'Tis', 'The Art of Harold Harvey', Colour, October 1920, pp. 48-54; Quoted in Ridson and Sheppard, 2001, p. 95.

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