William Gale

Lady Margaret Douglas Home, by 1961;
Leicester Galleries, London, where bought by Thomas Agnew, 14 Jan 1970;
Mrs Charlotte Frank, London, where bought by Sir David Scott, 9 April 1970 for £350

London, Leicester Galleries, The Victorian Scene, 1956, no. 122;
London, Agnew (in co-operation with the Victorian Society), Victorian Painting 1837-1887, 1961, no. 96

STRUCTURE The panel is sound and in stable condition. PAINT SURFACE Old retouching is clearly visible to the naked eye in the form of infilling to craquleure on the face of the girl and scattered spots throughout the sky. Also some scattered spots of this pigment to the trouser leg of the sailor. A layer of surface dirt throughout. ULTRAVIOLET UV light reveals the aforementionned retouchings to the sky and figures and an area to the left of the sailor's leg. FRAME Held in a lightly decorated gilded composite frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The London-born William Gale specialised in genre and figurative subjects, treated at least in the earlier years of his career with an intensity of colour and careful observation of detail which marks a response to Pre-Raphaelitism. He travelled in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, occasionally painting works of an Orientalist character as well as New Testament subjects in authentically observed landscapes.

It was partly Gale's long life which led to his extremely varied corpus of works; his regular Royal Academy exhibits spanned nearly fifty years from 1844. He seems regularly to have painted more light-hearted subjects of flirtation and romance such as the present. In an article describing Gale's work, James Dafforne cited a subject entitled Two Lovers whispering by an Orchard-wall as among a group of 'perfect gems of Art' (Art Journal, 1869, p. 374).

The present work is a fine example of the work of Gale's middle period, when he was responding to mid Victorian taste for sentimental subjects. Its format and double-figure composition can be compared to his painting The Confidante of 1857, now in the Tate. The subject of a young man leaving his sweet-heart to return to sea is reminiscent of paintings of emigration which were extremely popular in the mid Victorian period.

Although The Sailor's Farewell is not emotionally centred on the theme of emigration, it relates to the series of paintings of lovers and families departing across the seas. The subject of emigration was a topic of great debate as hundreds of thousands of people left British and Irish shores to seek a new life in the colonies. As Susan Casteras has explained 'The panacea for overpopulation, agricultural disasters, superfluous numbers of women, the Great Famine, and other problems afflicting Victorian England was often claimed to be emigration' (Susan P. Casteras, Oh! Emigration! Thou'rt the Curse...; Victorian Images of Emigration Themes, Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, 1 November 1985, p. 14).

The social debate concerning emigration led to the creation of many paintings depicting families or lovers departing, including Frederick Goodall's The Emigrant's Departure of 1848, Ford Madox Brown's The Last of England of 1853, Richard Redgrave's The Emigrant's Last Sight of Home of 1858 and Henry Nelson O'Neil's The Parting Cheer of 1861.