Philip Wilson Steer 1860-1942

The Artist
His Sale, Christie’s, London, 1942, lot.no.121, whence purchased by Lessore
Talbot Clifton
De Vere Clifton, on long-term loan to the Ministry of Works
Browse & Darby Ltd., London, from whom acquired by the present owner by 1974

London, N.E.A.C., April-May 1888, no.78;
Brussels, Les XX, 1889, no.Steer I (as 'Soir d’Ete')
Munich, Galaspalast, 1889
London, Royal Academy, Post-Impressionism, November – March 1980, no.345;
London, Browse & Darby, Philip Wilson Steer, 1985, no.3;
London, Tate, Exposed: The Victorian Nude, 2000-01, no.182.

Daily Telegraph, 19 April 1888;
The Magazine of Art, 1888, ‘Art Notes’, p.xxx;
D.S.MacColl, Life, Work & Setting of Philip Wilson Steer, Faber & Faber, London, 1945, p.190;
Bruce Laughton, ‘The British and American Contribution to Les XX, 1884-9’, Apollo, November, 1967, p.374;
Bruce Laughton, ‘Steer & French Painting’, Apollo, March 1970, p.212, illustrated in colour, pl.vi;
Bruce Laughton, Philip Wilson Steer 1860-1942, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1971, cat.no.36, illustrated in colour, pl.25, pp.14-17, 40;
John House, catalogue entry in London, Royal Academy, Impressionism, 1974, no.132;
Anna Gruetzner, catalogue entry in London, Royal Academy, Post-Impressionism, 1980, no.345, illustrated;
Jane Munro, ‘Introduction’, p.13, Fig.1, illustrated, essay in Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Philip Wilson Steer 1860-1942: Paintings and Watercolours, 1986;
Kenneth McConkey, British Impressionism, Phaidon, Oxford, 1989, pp.81,84,85,89,97 & 153, illustrated in colour pl.78, p.82;
Kenneth McConkey, Impressionism in Britain, Yale & Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1995, pp.46-47;
Ysanne Holt, British Artists & the Modernist Landscape, Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot 2003, p.32.

A Summer’s Evening is arguably the most important painting by Steer to appear at auction in the past three decades. Physically large, it is not only the artist’s first major work in a fully-fledged divisionist manner, but also possibly the first by any British artist.

Painted in the later part of 1887 and probably into 1888, it was first exhibited at the N.E.A.C. exhibition in April of 1888 and caused a good deal of consternation amongst the reviewers, whose comments quite clearly show that it was the divisionist technique that caused them most difficulty.

'The effect is in some respects painful, Mr Steer’s endeavours to do justice to sunlight having missed the mark, while the vivid reds and yellows against the deep blue positively hurt one’s eyes' (The Magazine of Art, op.cit.).

'Above all, the British Philistine will wonderingly inquire what manner of yellow maidens, with flame-coloured hair, are those whom Mr P Wilson Steer (74) has found undraped on a burning beach flowing with streams of molten lava. This is a picture you could warm your hands at, or boil eggs over, and it should be looked at – just once' (Telegraph, op.cit.).

'… the utter unnaturalness and audacity of Mr.Wilson Steer’s Summer Evening made me feel quite uncomfortable. Three nude girls with spotty orange coloured skins, who have been bathing in a deep blue sea, stand on a beach or red, blue and yellow spots; the girls are in no respect even passable in appearance, the drawing imperfect, and the whole composition looked to me like a piece of aggressive affectation' (Anonymous reviewer, ‘Penelope’, publication untraced).

Although we are now unfortunately unable to trace the review of the 1888 N.E.A.C. show that this quotation came from, it does, like the others, give a sense of the conservatism of many contemporary British critics.

British artists were very much aware of contemporary painting in France but this tended to be more inclined towards the realist art of Bastien-Lepage and his followers and thus the hanging of A Summer’s Evening in the prime place of the 1888 exhibition made a very clear statement of intent on behalf of the more advanced members who felt that the N.E.A.C. should be a forum that exhibited the most current and advanced work. Alexander Harrison’s In Arcadia (fig.1, Coll. Musee D’Orsay, Paris) had been the star of the show the previous year and whilst the subject, three naked girls in an orchard, bears a resemblance to A Summer’s Evening, Steer’s use of a technique that closely echoes the current trends marks it plainly as a work aware of the latest moves in Paris. What is remarkable, however, is that Steer appears to have reached this point with relatively little direct exposure to contemporary French art. He had, like many of his contemporaries, spent a reasonable amount of time in Paris and elsewhere since the early 1880s, but from what we can deduce about his experiences, and by looking at the paintings that survive, his influences seem to have been more attuned to Sargent and Whistler (c.f. The Bridge [Coll. Tate Gallery, London] of 1887). There are a number of exhibitions of impressionist work, both in London and Paris, that Steer may have seen, but there is no conclusive evidence of his experiences. Several earlier small works have a spontaneity of handling that demonstrates impressionist tendencies, and the partially hatched and liquid Summer at Cowes (Coll. Manchester City Art Galleries) of 1887 shows a definite knowledge of Monet and Renoir.

However, in A Summer’s Evening, Steer is seeking to produce a work which is a direct  statement of his vision of modern painting and assimilates a variety of different influences into this work. A number of comparisons have been drawn by commentators with the example of Seurat who from the mid-1880s had developed a style that both moved with and against the impressionism of the 1870s. A Summer’s Evening is a work which follows a similar path, and close inspection of the painting itself reveals marked differences in the handling across different areas of the canvas. The sea and the cliffs beyond are painted in the fluid strokes of early impressionism whilst the beach is a mass of densely painted dabs of pure colour. The three figures (possibly the same model in three different poses) are painted with both division of colour and hatched brushstrokes. The size of the canvas, like Seurat’s major works, precludes a plein air approach, whilst the arcadian idyll of these nymph-like bathers takes us away from any thought that this might be real life. In this, Steer may be echoing the work of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, such as The Pleasant Land (Coll. Musee Bonnat, Bayonne) of 1882 in which a sense of freedom, leisure and otherworldliness permeates the composition.

A Summer’s Evening was hung at Les XX exhibition of 1889 alongside Seurat’s Poseuses (fig.2, Coll. Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania) of 1886-1888 and whilst the differences between the two canvases are now, at the distance of well over a century, quite clear, we can see that both artists are aiming towards a synthesis of the currents of contemporary modernism that would shape the course of art for the next two decades.