Charles Conder

Colonel Cecil Lawson (according to a torn paper label on the reverse)
Agnew's, London (1979)
Baron Alastair Goodlad (British High Commissioner to Australia 2000-2005)
Agnew's, London (2005)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

 

London, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers (Second Exhibition of Fair Women), February-March 1909, no. 68
London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings and Watercolors by Charles Conder, October 1934
Possibly, London, National Gallery, Twentieth Century British Paintings, 1940

Frank F. GIbson and Campbell Dodgson, Charles Conder, his life and work, London, 1914, p. 103
"Paintings and Watercolors by Charles Conder and Ambrose McEvoy at the Beaux Arts Gallery," Apollo, v. 12, 1930, p. 465

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is in beautiful and untouched condition. The canvas has never been lined. The paint layer is slightly subdued, and could probably be lightly cleaned and varnished to noticeable effect. There appear to be no retouches and no damages. The painting can also be hung as is.
"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."

In 1889 British-born Charles Conder with fellow emerging artists Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts launched the landmark 9 x 5 Impressionism Exhibition in Melbourne, their small-scale compositions, many of them plein air Australian landscapes, painted with rapid, painterly strokes pointed toward their awareness of James McNeill Whistler and other Aesthetic painters. The following year Conder travelled to France where he entered the fin-de-siecle circles of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Aubrey Beardsley, and Oscar Wilde, spending summers painting in Dieppe often with his friend Jacques-Émile Blanche.  While Conder’s Bohemian lifestyle provided artistic inspiration, it was not until his 1901 marriage to wealthy Canadian widow Stella Maris Belford that he enjoyed the financial and social stability of the beau-monde.  From this period came The Howe in Spring, one of a group of works painted after 1900 on larger canvases and depicting the Edwardian pursuits of women playing croquet or as in the present work, picking flowers in Oxford (Ann Galbally, Charles Conder, the last bohemian, Melbourne, 2003, pp. 264-70).  The women in the foreground of The Howe in Spring may be Stella and her sister, married to Colonel Cecil Lawson whose country home, “The Howe,” could be the building in the distance (and the Lawsons owned several of Conder's paintings including most probably the present work).  Conder visited The Howe in 1906, finding welcome respite from physical and personal ailments and finding new sources of inspiration. While the artist had painted blooming trees from the beginning of his career, the present work is particularly expressive in its weaving of loosely applied paint with heavier areas of impasto to create a unified vision of the exuberance of Spring.  While a singular vision of the artist, The Howe in Spring suggests Conder’s affiliation with the American post-Impressionist Maurice Prendergast who he had studied with in 1890 and later shared the same patron, New York lawyer John Quinn (Charles Conder, Robert Henri, James Morrice, Maurice Prendergast, the formative years, Paris 1890s, exh. cat., New York, 1975, n.p.)