William Henry Margetson 1861-1940

A New Day is a particularly elegant painting by Margetson, who specialised in sophisticated images of beautiful young women dressed in fine fabrics and residing in sumptuous interiors. The title is suggestive of rebirth and of optimism and in many ways A New Day relates to the pictures that were painted in the years immediately preceding the turn of the century (see lot 257), when artists painted the hope of the future in allegorical terms. Often the subjects were taken from mythology; Eos the Dawn Goddess and her lover Tithonos, or in more generic pagan terms in paintings of Apollonian devotees of the Sun-God. The theme that linked these varied images at the Royal Academy exhibitions of the 1890s and early 1900s, was the idea of sun worship suggesting a new and more hopeful age. Whether the artists depicted the classical Persephone or a modern day woman gazing out of a window at a new dawn, the idea of rejuvenation and rebirth is paramount. Margetson's painting was painted thirty years after the celebrations of dawn painted in and around 1900, and his 'rebirth' shown in A New Day, is that of the Post-War period after World War I which had ravaged the people of Europe and left deep scars. The artists of the 1930s sought to depict a new and better epoch after the hardship of the war. Artists like Margetson chose to work in an established style which had its roots in the Renaissance, to retrace a lost innocence and idealism. Far from old-fashioned, his colour schemes were always vibrant and his depictions of women were perceptive and glamorous. The great painter of elegance John Singer Sargent had died in 1925 and his influence was far reaching among the artists who exhibited at the Royal Academy, which was presided over by Frank Dicksee, whose elegant portraits of ladies and debutantes had been seen at virtually every Academy exhibition for the past thirty years (see lot 247). Although Dicksee's Presidency had come to an abrupt end with his death two years before Margetson painted A New Day, his principles were continued by his successor, the equally suave painter of society women, William Llewellyn.