Stanhope Alexander Forbes, R.A. 1857-1947

Structure: Original canvas. There are some areas of craquelure, particularly to the children and some further patches to the background, otherwise the paint surface is in good clean condition. Ultraviolet Light Analysis: There is extensive retouching to the childrens' faces and strengthening to their outlines. Further scattered patches of retouching in the background. Some retouching visible to the naked eye. Frame: Held in an ornate plaster gilt frame in good condition.
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The Orchard, Quimperlé is an important and fascinating rediscovery of an early work by one of the most influential artists of the early twentieth century. Previously unrecorded it is a very welcome addition to the small group of known pictures painted by Stanhope Forbes in France in the early 1880s when he first began to paint en plein air.
The picture depicts a rural idyll, a trio of children in traditional Breton costume idling away their time in the sunny tranquility of a summer orchard. The setting for the painting and the young models were found in the French town of Quimperlé and it appears that the picture was painted in the apple orchard of the old Ursuline convent on the banks of the river Odet on the opposite bank to the spot where Forbes painted a contemporary picture  The Convent (sold in these rooms, 2 June 2004, lot 6). 

Stanhope Forbes first visited the medieval town of Quimperlé near Finisteré in June 1882 when, accompanied by his friend and fellow student from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris Henry La Thangue, he spent the summer at the Hôtel Metayer. It has been noted that, 'Quimperlé itself, while not a colony as popular as either Pont-Aven or Concarneau, was nevertheless, on the route from Paris to Pont-Aven. Artists intent on reaching Pont-Aven quickly caught the overnight train from Paris to Quimperlé before catching the mail coach which passed through Quimperlé before arriving at Pont-Aven.' (Adrian Jenkins, Painters and Peasants; Henry la Thangue and British Rural Naturalism 1880-1905, 2000, p. 65).  Although Quimperlé was regarded by some artists as a stopping point on the route to Pont-Aven, other artists like Forbes and La Thangue made it their destination. Forbes was immediately enchanted by the 'beautiful rapid flowing river, a thickly wooded valley and in it a quaint old town with the whitest of houses and the queerest of roofs. Very steep streets crowded on market day, almost empty on other days. All the men dressed in regular Breton costume the women in the most wonderful of coiffs and collars.' (Caroline Fox, Stanhope Forbes and the Newlyn School, 1993, p. 15) Although the town had little to entertain visitors other than the observation of humble rural life Forbes' was delighted to find that he could live in Quimperlé on a mere pound a week and that the town and its locality offered a multitude of attractive subjects for paintings. Unfortunately the weather was against the two artists and Forbes was forced by the rain to spend his time fishing and rambling around the town and the local fields rather than painting. La Thangue was even more defeatist in his attitude to Brittany and much to Forbes' annoyance he retreated to England after only two days.

Forbes was clearly fascinated by the everyday work of the peasants and particularly the past-times of the children he encountered in Quimperlé. He painted them collecting eggs, fishing in the river and playing with toy boats, eating soup at the side of the road and collecting wool in the orchard of the old convent as in the present picture. His pictures have a warmth of character expressed through the faces of the Quimperlé people and capture those clear, crisp moments of sunshine on the verdant landscape between rain showers. These paintings were Forbes' earliest experimentation in outdoor painting, a practice he would extol as crucial to his art for the rest of his career.

Forbes had visited the Brittany coast  in 1881 and painted his famous A Street Scene in Brittany (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) of a young girl knitting on the doorstep of a Cancale fisherman's house. A Street Scene in Brittany and Preparations for the Market, Quimperlé (Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand), like the present picture depict local girls dressed in the traditional blue and white Breton costume. The central figure in Breton Girls in a Field, Quimperlé appears to have been painted from the same model that features in the Dunedin picture wearing the same apron and clogs. However the distinctive Breton hat that she wears in the present picture is of the type worn by the older woman in Preparations for the Market, Quimperlé. The models for the figures of the boy and girl in both paintings also appear in The Convent also of 1882.

Breton Girls in a Field, Quimperlé shares similarities in composition and subject to Henry La Thangue's full length painting of a girl, Gathering Wool (sold in these rooms, 25 November 2004, lot 415) painted a decade later in 1893. However the most striking similarity can be drawn between Forbes' painting and Breton Girl Carrying a Jar by George Clausen (Victoria and Albert Museum) which was also painted in 1882. Clausen had joined Forbes in Brittany after La Thangue's departure and the two artist's work was very similar at this time. Forbes' wrote to his mother of Clausen's prospected arrival, '[La] Thangue tells me he is sending me G. Clausen the painter and [his] wife for a trip. Very glad as he is a really good painter, in fact belongs to the sacred band whom even I admire.' (ibid Jenkins, p. 65) Clausen was a great admirer of the rural naturalism of the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage whose work he had seen at the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in London in 1880. The influence of Lepage's famous painting of a young French peasant Pas Mêche of 1882 (National Gallery of Scotland) is evident in both Clausen's  Breton Girl Carrying a Jar and Forbes' Breton Girls in a Field, Quimperlé. Clausen had certainly seen Pas Mêche when it was exhibited at Arthur Tooth's gallery in London in 1882 and although it is not known whether Forbes also saw the exhibition of this picture, it is clear that Clausen and Forbes discussed Lepage's work at length and were inspired by their shared admiration. For Breton Girl Carrying a Jar and Breton Girls in a Field, Quimperlé Forbes and Clausen adopted the same colour scheme of greens, teal blues and white, whilst the dramatic central positioning of the figures create a similar immediacy. The high horizon in both paintings, the dominance of the figures within the composition and the sense that the spectator had just happened upon the girls amid the fields, are elements typically found in Lepage's work. A testement to the closeness of Clausen and Forbes at this time and their enthusiasm for Lepage's style of plein-air painting, is a small painting by Clausen of 1882 entitled Artist Painting Out of Doors (Bristol Museum and Art Gallery) which most likely depicts Forbes painting in the fields of Quimperlé.