The present work is a re-discovered masterpiece by pioneering female artist Helen Galloway McNicoll. Born in Toronto and deaf from the age of two following a bout of scarlet fever, McNicoll played a pivotal role in introducing Impressionism to a Canadian audience in the early 20th Century. She came from a wealthy background, which allowed her to travel, and she spent much of her life living and working in Britain. Her British parents had emigrated to Canada but maintained significant ties to the UK, through her father’s links to the Scottish and English railway industry. They were interested in art, her father would frequently sketch while her mother enjoyed painting, and this may have spurred Helen’s initial interest in pursuing a career as an artist.
McNicoll travelled to England in 1902 and studied first at the Slade, under the tutelage of Philip Wilson Steer, and later in St Ives at the Julius Olsson School with Algernon Talmage. She developed a signature style that was heavily influenced by the Impressionists, employing their dappled brush strokes and use of vibrant colour in her depictions, which often focused on women at work outdoors, or children engaged in play. She would frequently paint her subjects en plein air and was particularly adept in her depictions of light, wonderfully capturing the effects of sun and shadow across the English or French landscape. Upon graduation she began exhibiting widely, including at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Ontario Society of Artists. She was later elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1913 and was created an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1914, one of the few women of the time to receive this honour.
Fundamental to McNicoll’s artistic development was her friendship with the British artist Dorthea Sharp, whom she likely met in 1905 or 1906. They developed a close friendship, living together in London, sharing a studio in Maida Vale, and travelling throughout the UK and in France to a series of different artist’s colonies in Staithes, Runswick, Brittany and Grez-sur-Loing, just southeast of Paris. They often painted alongside one another, depicting variations of the same scene, and would share the same models. They were working together in France when World War I broke out, and McNicoll wrote to her father that she: "would rather be here than anywhere", but due to her father’s ties to the rail industry she was sent home to Canada.
In the present work we see a sun dappled field, verdant and lush, depicted using confident brush strokes, the path on the left drawing our eye into the distance. We see three women, thoroughly engaged in their labours, one picking what appears to be French beans to add to her woven basket, while another works the soil in the background. The work is very typical of McNicoll’s style and subject matter, and is amongst the most confident works of her oeuvre, but it was only very recently re-discovered, having been unseen in public for over 100 years.
The current owner David Taylor acquired the work from a local auction house, who catalogued the piece as ‘in the manner of Helen McNicoll,’ it was only upon unframing the work, that Helen McNicoll’s signature was discovered. Further investigations into the pigments, materials, and exhibition history of the work, on a recent episode of Fake or Fortune, revealed the piece to be a genuine work by McNicoll. It is very likely the work is The Bean Harvest, which was exhibited regularly during McNicoll’s lifetime, but has not been seen since the Royal Academy Show in 1915.
McNicoll died at the age of 35 in 1915 in Dorset, as the result of complications from diabetes. Her short but illustrious career produced some of the most highly regarded Impressionist works by a Canadian artist, and her reputation has continued to grow. A major exhibition of her and Mary Cassatt’s work was shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in 2023, Cassatt – McNicoll: Impressionists Between Worlds,, Helen McNicoll. An Impressionist Journey, a major retrospective is currently on view at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec through January 2025, and in 2023 a new world record at auction was set for her work The Chintz Sofa, which sold for $888,000 (CAD).