Robert Walker Macbeth R.A. 1848-1910

Robert Walker Macbeth's most attractive subjects are those in which rustic young ladies are reclined or seated amid bounteous English countryside, which he painted mainly in Lincolnshire and Somerset. He loved to depict the fisher-folk of the fens and gypsy travellers and showmen about their labours and langorous farm-girls and milk maids resting in the sunlight. Fair Pledges of a Fruitful Tree celebrates the fertility of spring with the little fawn and bursts of apple blossom in the orchard where a little girl has rested with her placid collie. The pose of the girl seated upon the roots of the tree, recalls a striking picture dated 1890 entitled In The Cider Orchard (Sotheby's, London, 15th June 1996, lot 96) whilst another comparison can be made with The Foster Mother of 1896 (Sotheby's, Sussex, 25th October 1994, lot 181) in which lambs feed from the hand of a young lady beneath a fruit tree. The work of Fred Walker heavily influenced Macbeth’s sense of picturesque nature in his studies of countryside life. A similar picture to Fair Pledges of a Fruitful Tree, of a girl reposed against an apple tree by Fred Walker, can be found at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Arthur Hughes also painted in a very similar manner subjects which combined the beauty of young women, animals and the British countryside. Hughes, Walker and Macbeth shared a picturesque approach to their subjects, which were painted in a meticulous and sophisticated manner and with bright and poetic colouring.

The present picture takes its title from the first line of the poem To Blossoms by the Seventeenth Century poet Robert Herrick;

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast?

Your date is not so past

But you may stay yet here awhile

To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.