Arthur Hughes

Commissioned by William Pattinson, J.P. of Felling, near Gateshead c.1866 and thence by descent;
Sotheby's, Belgravia, 24 October 1978, lot 10 to Fischer Fine Art, from whom bought by the Fine Art Society, London, on behalf of the Forbes Magazine collection;
Their sale, Christie's, London, 19 February 2003, lot 11;
Private collection

Royal Academy, 1867, no.418;
32 Victorian Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection, 1981;
Japanese touring exhibition, Raphael-zenpa to Sono Jidai (The Pre-Raphaelites and their Times), 1985, no.13;
Denver and New York, Childhood in Victorian England, 1985, no.14;
Childhood, 1988, no.209;
Newcastle, Laing Art Gallery, Pre-Raphaelites; Painters and Patrons in the North East, 1989-90, no.52;
La Era Victoriana, 1997, no.35

Athenaeum, 9 March 1867, p.327;
The Times, 9 May 1867, p.7;
Athenaeum, 11 May 1867, p.629;
Art Journal, 1867, p.143;
Athenaeum, 16 October 1875, p.516;
R.L. Green (ed.), The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, 1953, p.253;
S. Moore, 'The Awakening Consciousness: The Forbes Collection of Victorian Painting', in Country Life, 5 June 1986, p.1574, illus. pl.1;
Leonard Roberts and Stephen Wildman, Arthur Hughes: His Life and Works, 1997, pp.169-70, illus. pl.58

The following condition report has been prepared by Hamish Dewar Ltd., 13 and 14 Mason's Yard, Duke Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6BU. UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE STRUCTURE The canvas is unlined and the four turnover and tacking edges have been strengthened with a thin strip-lining. The canvas and the artist's original loose unattached dust canvas are securely attached to what appears to be the original keyed wooden stretcher. There is an extensive pattern of raised craquelure visible throughout the composition. This is stable and is not particularly visually distracting. PAINT SURFACE The paint surface has an even varnish layer. Inspection under ultraviolet light shows scattered retouchings, the most significant of which are: 1) a thin horizontal line running through the far left figure's forehead and further spots and lines within his red jacket, 2) carefully applied intermittent lines within the standing girl's dress to the left of the central sitter, 3) horizontal lines running through the lower part of the standing girl's blue dress, and small spots to the face of the young girl to her left. Other small spots and lines are also visible throughout the composition. SUMMARY The painting would therefore appear to be in good condition with no further work required.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The Birthday Picnic was commissioned in 1866 by William Watson Pattinson J.P. (1813-1894) to mark the occasion of the fifth birthday of his son Norman Percy Pattinson (1862-1934). William Pattinson was a nephew and business partner of Hugh Lee Pattinson (1796-1858) a Tyneside chemical manufacturer who had patented a process of de-silvering lead in 1833. The establishment of a chemical works manufacturing soda, sulphuric acid and chlorine at Felling in Gateshead in 1834, which employed over 10,000 at the peak of its activity, made a fortune for the Pattinson family. William Pattinson built a magnificent home for his family Felling House, containing a substantial library and art collection with pictures by Myles Birket Foster, Simeon Solomon, Albert Goodwin, Charles Napier Hemy and the local Pre-Raphaelite William Bell Scott. Pattinson admired Arthur Hughes' work and also owned two small oil paintings of women dressed in medieval costume, The Knight's Guerdon (Elaine withe the Armour of Launcelot) and The Singer (both in a private collection). Both of these small panels are dated c.1866-7 and it is likely that they were purchased around the time that The Birthday Picnic was commissioned by Pattinson.

Hughes was a master of portraiture and it was when he was painting commissioned likenesses that he was arguably at his best and most original. He was both imaginative and poetic in his placing of figures and in 1863 he had painted a remarkably beautiful portrait of Maria, the wife and children of another Tyneside industrialist and art collector James Leathart, looking from a Venetian balcony (FIG 1. private collection). Leathart owned the largest lead manufacturing firm in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Locke, Blackett & Co. He would have known Pattinson through business associations and may have introduced Hughes to Pattinson.  When Pattinson asked Hughes to paint his family the artist used a similar composition to that of the Leatharts, with an arched top and a mother placed at the centre with her children at both sides. He decided to place the Pattinson family group in a glade of Felling Woods close to their home on a spring day. He seated Mrs Anna Pattinson (nee Watson, 1820-1902) on the grass, dressed in a beautiful golden gown with her six children arranged around her. In the background among the birch trees is a picnic-blanket and hamper guarded by a snoozing wire-haired terrier and Mrs Pattinson is making garlands of bluebells for her children to wear as they celebrate her youngest son's birthday. Norman is seated to her immediate left, with bluebells in his hair and his hand in his mother's as she weaves more flowers around his wrist. Norman's oldest brother Hugh Lee (1852-1924) has his hand on the birthday-boy's shoulder whilst the youngest of the children Ethel Nora (1860-1933) kneels beside with a garland for her own crimped golden hair. To the right is Walter (dates not known) plucking bluebells from the grass for his mother and seemingly lost in his own thoughts. The older girls Margaret (1845-1881), whose beauty mirrored that of her mother, and Edith Annie (1856-1931) are wandering arm-in-arm among the trees looking for flowers. The composition is completed by a canopy of pink blossom over the sylvan idyll which has been compared to John Everett Millais' Apple Blossoms of 1856-7 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight) which was in another local collection, that of Jacob Burnett.  It was a world away from the polluted air of Pattinson's chemical factories in the town below the woods.

In the spring of 1866, when The Birthday Picnic was nearing completion, Hughes wrote to Leathart from his house in Putney, Windsor Lodge; 'My work at Felling at the likenesses grew so pressing in the latter part of last week, I could not manage even to get over to Bracken Dene to wish Mrs. Leathart and yourself goodbye.. I had to work until dark each day at last, but hoped to see... you on Saturday; but the last day was worse than the others and it was not to be. I had to pack up the picture after finishing with the daylight painting and before starting by the train at eleven... I hope soon to be northward again either about the portrait of Mrs. Jesmer or a new group that Mr. Pattinson has been contemplating.' The second portrait group mentioned in the letter to Leathart does not appear to have materialised and it has been suggested that it was to have depicted Anna and William Watson Pattinson himself, but it may have been intended to depict the Pattinson's other six children Thomas William (1844-72), Mary (1847-92), Joseph Watson (1849-1910), Charles Reginald (1857-1931), Lewis Gerald (1859-1923), Victoria (dates not known).

When The Birthday Picnic was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867 the art correspondent for The Times described it as 'exquisite in refinement' (The Times, 30 April 1864, p.14) and F.G. Stephens complimented; 'how tenderly [Hughes] can read the face of fair children, how beautifully he can paint them' (Athenaeum, 11 May 1867, p.629). The Birthday Picnic is one of the greatest Pre-Raphaelite portrait groups from the most fertile period in the movement's history, when it was at its most fully-formed and decorous.