Gorry Gallery 16. William H. Bartlett (Detail) FRONT COVER: William H. Bartlett 1858-1932 Catalogue Number 16. (Detail) © GORRY GALLERY LTD. GORRY GALLERY requests the pleasure of your company at the private view of An Exhibition of 18th - 21st Century Paintings on Wednesday, 14th March, 2007 Wine 6 o’clock This exhibition can be viewed prior to the opening by appointment and at www.gorrygallery.ie Kindly note that all paintings in this exhibition are for sale from 6.00 p.m. 14th March – 31st March 2007 16. WILLIAM HENRY BARTLETT, 1858-1932 ‘His Last Work’ Oil on canvas 115.5 x 153.5 Signed and dated 1885 Exhibited, Royal Academy, 1885 (no 1160) Provenance: William Wallace Spence, Baltimore City Gifted to the Presbyterian House, Towson, Maryland by Mrs Bartow Van Ness and Mrs Frederick Barron granddaughters of William Wallace Spence Bears label of Dicksee and Dicksee, 1 Pall Mall Place, London and a label inscribed with the title in the artist’s hand, giving his address as Park Lodge, Church Street, Chelsea In its original carved and gilded exhibition frame, possibly designed by the artist William Henry Bartlett is emerging as one of the most interesting and accomplished artists to have worked in Ireland in the nineteenth century. Although a visitor, he engaged directly with Irish subject matter both in paint and in print. He is known today for his remarkably innovative views of daily life in the West, which form an important link between the essentially Victorian, and often sentimental, work of other visiting artists such as Howard Helmick and the figurative work of Charles Lamb and Paul Henry in the early decades of the twentieth century. Much still remains to be learnt of Bartlett’s life and, while his Connemara views are much appreciated and collected, his major exhibition pieces in other genres are little known, no doubt because of their great rarity. The present work, recently rediscovered, has claim to be Barlett’s early masterpiece and reveals his debt to the French tradition in which he trained. Bartlett studied under Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in the mid 1870s, where he was a fellow pupil of Aloysius O’Kelly. He also enrolled at the Académie Julian under Fleury and Bougereau. His Irish work of the later 1870s and 1880s such as On the Beach Connemara, and Off to the Fair, Connemara (both private collections), clearly recall the plein-air naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage, however several paintings, including His Last Work, sit more squarely within the academic tradition in which he studied. Bartlett attained compositional brilliance and technical fluency in his years in Paris before returning to London in 1880. He continued his links with France and was awarded a silver medal at the Paris exhibition of 1889. 4 Two paintings in particular take as their inspiration Bartlett’s years in France, His Last Work and the related The Neighbours (private collection). The latter picture, dated 1881, clearly recalls his student days in Paris and shows two young artists in their studio, distracted from their discussion of art by the appearance of a pretty neighbour at the opposite window. His Last Work, by contrast, shows the studio of a prosperous sculptor. The mid and late nineteenth century saw a whole genre emerge, particularly in France, of paintings of artists’ studio. Typically, the artist is shown at work, often with a model posing or resting. This tradition is exemplified by, for example, Edouard Dantan’s A Corner of the Studio (1880, Musée des Art Decoratifs, Paris) in which a sculptor is shown carving a relief of the Triumph of Silenus, or by Jean-François Raffaëlli’s, At the Foundry (1886, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon). Bartlett introduces a complex and emotionally powerful variation on the subject by showing visitors to a studio admiring the final work of a recently deceased sculptor. There has long been a fascination with the last works of artists, and Bartlett plays with this theme in the picture and explicitly in its title. Unlike the pietàs with which Titian and Michelangelo struggled in their last years, charged with emotional and religious intensity, and experimenting with an unfinished aesthetic to convey the imperfectability of human life, there is a neat irony in the highly finished, and wholly secular, sculpture being unveiled to the company. The three figures to the left presumably include family members or friends of the artist; the young girl to the right, is no doubt his daughter. She looks intently as her young mother, dressed in mourning black, poignantly encircles the sculpture with a wreath. There is a telling juxtaposition between the black of the widow’s weeds and the glistening white of the marble and the clear suggestion that she was the model for the work. In an inversion of the Pygmalion myth, popular among contemporary artists such as Burne-Jones, instead of the sculpture being brought to life by the artist’s touch, his death leaves his sculpture mute, his widow bereft. This innovative take on sculptor, studio, sculpture and model prefigures important works by his master Jean-Léon Gérôme, notably the French artist’s The End of the Séance (1887, whereabouts, unknown) and perhaps even more so The Artist and his Model (1895, Haggin Museum, Stockton, California). Of course the youthful appearance of both mother and daughter adds greatly to the pathos of the scene. It contrasts absolutely with earlier French depictions of artists’ studios, for example a work by Jean-Baptise Lallemand (Musée des Beaux-Art de Dijon) where an artist is shown again in his studio sketching while his young wife and daughter read and draw contentedly. The absence of the artist in the very private place of his working environment (from which perhaps others were kept away lest they be a distraction) is the haunting hole at the centre of the picture’s conceit. This is emphasized by the great stillness to the composition, the figures to the left join us as spectators to the central scene of loss, simply but very effectively conveyed by the facial expressions of mother and daughter. At the same time the slightly exaggerated perspective, emphasized by the receding lines of the floor boards (a trick Bartlett also employs in The Neighbours), forces the attention onto the artist’s last work and his bereaved family. It is a powerful work in conception, cleverly composed and unusually assured for so young an artist. The contents of the studio reflect the sculptor’s inspiration, from the classical past, the Renaissance and also contemporary art. On the left is a cast of a typical quattrocento Florentine Madonna and Child relief, in the manner of Desiderio da Settignano or Antonio Rosselino. (Illustrated inside front cover) On the table at the back of the room sits a version of the famous bust of Clytie. Formerly in the celebrated collection of marbles formed by Charles Townley, it was one of the most frequently copied of all classical sculptures (Goethe alone owned two versions). Showing more recent inspiration, directly above the widow’s head is a reproduction of Ingres’ famous La Source (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) painted some thirty years earlier, the position of its arm echoing that in the sculpture on display. This, as well as the costumes of the figures, particularly that of the gentleman to the left, seem to localise the scene firmly as a Parisian atelier. Prints, medallions, busts and fragments of statuary complete the accoutrements of the studio, which itself is sparse furnished, only a few rugs, a stove and kettle and some palm fronds soften the austerity of the space. The large window, an essential element of any artist’s studio, is half covered, the bright southern light it had provided, needed no longer. The picture is boldly, rather proudly, signed and dated 1885, the year that it was exhibited by Bartlett at the Royal Academy. Clearly it was a work with which he was pleased, as it was the only picture he exhibited in the Academy that year. Its history immediately after its completion is uncertain; however, it soon found its way to America and an early reproduction of it in the files of the Witt Library, London, indicates it was donated to the collection of Presbyterian House, Towson, Maryland. In addition to paintings such as those by Gérôme noted above, the theme of the artist’s studio was addressed by several Irish artists, Aloysius O’Kelly, produced a work rather similar to Bartlett’s The Neighbours in his self portrait with a friend in his Parisian studio (private collection). However, perhaps the closest comparison is with Richard Thomas Moynan’s The Artist in his Studio in Dublin (National Gallery of Ireland), which is dated 1887 just two year’s after His Last Work and it is tempting to see a connection between these related pictures; Moynan would very likely have seen the latter in the Royal Academy exhibition. Like Moynan, Bartlett was a slow worker and pictures of this scale and complexity are extremely rare in his oeuvre. In light of the current awakening appreciation of nineteenth- century genre painting, as exemplified by artists such as Moynan, the rediscovery of this major painting by one of the most gifted artist to have worked in Ireland is greatly to be welcomed. 5 48. MICHAEL ANGELO HAYES R.H.A. 1820-1877 ‘A fashionable equestrian group at the Palace Street gate of Dublin Castle; c. 1850.’ Watercolour heightened with white on paper laid down on linen, 74 x 109.5. This large painting of an unknown group at the Palace Street gate of Dublin Castle is both unusual and interesting.