Henry Herbert La Thangue 1859-1929

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Description

Henry Herbert La Thangue
the farm pond
signed l.l.: H. H. La Thangue; signed and inscribed with the title on an old label attached to the stretcher
oil on canvas

Provenance

Purchased at the Royal Academy in 1930 by a private collector and thence by descent until 1997;
London, Sotheby's, 18 June 1997, lot 41;
Private collection

Exhibited

London, Royal Academy, Commemorative Exhibition of Works by Late Members, 1930, no. 177

Catalogue Note

The Farm Pond is a dynamic and charming example of the later art of Clausen which was focused upon the depiction of picturesque rural life. In 1929 he exhibited several paintings of Provencal peasants, A Provencal Fore-Court, Provencal Workers and Casting the Burden and The Farm Pond is refreshing as it depicts the leisurely idleness of children and their enthusiastic play, the theme of dolce far niente which had appeared in so many different guises in art throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This painting has a similar subject to A Sussex Stream which he exhibited in 1928, in which a young boy is wading in a stream catching minnows with a net and a jam jar.

Idyllic scenes of farming life can also be found in the contemporary work of Clausen's great friend Stanhope Forbes who exhibited several comparable pictures at the Academy in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The most pertinent example is Forbes' The Water Rat which depicts a group of children fishing by an old bridge over a stream which was exhibited in 1932.