LOT DETAILS
Materials:
oil on canvas
Measurements:
30.31 in. (77.00 cm.) (height) by 18.11 in. (46.00 cm.) (width)
Markings:
signed and dated 'FRED HALL/1886' (lower right)
Exhibited:
London, New English Art Club, 1886, no.13
Literature:
Pall Mall Gazette 'Extra', 'The New English Art Club', 1886, p.72, illustrated in a line drawing ,F.R. Gunzi, Fred Hall, Naturalism, Caricature and the Luministe Landscape, 2016, p.8 (exhibition catalogue, Penlee House Gallery and Museum)1See also Napier Hemy's monumental Pilchards, 1897 (Tate), Percy Craft's Tucking a School of Pilchards, 1897 (Penlee House Gallery, Penzance), and Stanhope Forbes's The Seine Boat, 1904 (Private Collection).,2A. Meynell, The Art Journal, 'Newlyn', 1889, p.139. It may be that such bonnets remained in use until the early twentieth century in remote areas. One of the women in Stanhope Forbes's The Fleet in Sight, 1911 (Private Collection), for instance, wears such a bonnet. For an interesting discussion of working women's attire in Newlyn see Mary O'Neill, Art and Artifice, 'Cornwall's 'Fisherfolk'', 2014 (Sansom), pp.43-59. ,3Hall and Harris appear to have produced closely comparable head studies of the same models; see Hall's Portrait of a Fisher Boy and Harris's Boy Wearing a Hat.,4Hall showed An Orchard Scene near Newlyn, Cornwall at the Society of British Artists in the winter of 1884/5, probably the picture mistitled Autumn 1918, the cover illustration for F.R. Gunzi, Fred Hall, 2016.,5Alfred George Webster (1852-1916) was George Clausen's brother-in-law; for British students in Antwerp, see Jeanne Sheehy, Art History, 'The Flight from South Kensington, British Artists at the Antwerp Academy, 1877-1885', vol.20, 1997, pp.124-153.,6The first reference to Hall in Stanhope Forbes' letters (Hyman Keitman Archive, Tate Britain) occurs when he attended Forbes' birthday dinner with Frank Bramley and William Banks Fortescue on 8 November 1885.,7Hall's awareness of Clausen's work is indicated in An Orchard near Newlyn, Cornwall, 1884 (sold Bonhams 2 July 2002, lot 6, see note 4). ,8Clausen's Shepherdess, 1885 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and La Thangue's In the Dauphiné, 1884-6 (Private Collection), appeared alongside A Fisherman's Daughter on the same page of the Pall Mall Gazette 'Extra', illustrated from the artist's original sketches. F.R. Gunzi (Fred Hall, 2016, p.8) appears to conflate the title of the present work with that of Old Birds, one of Hall's exhibits at the Royal Academy in 1887. This latter work, quite different in character, showing an old woman plucking a goose, was illustrated from an original sketch in the Pall Mall Gazette 'Extra', 1887, p.14.,9K. McConkey, The New English, A History of the New English Art Club, 2006 (RA Publications), pp.29-42.,10C.L.H., The Academy and , 'Art: From Newlyn to Whitechapel', 5 April 1902, p.369. R. Jope-Slade, Black and White Handbook to the Royal Academy and New Gallery, 'The Outsiders', 1893, p.25, gives the erroneous impression that Hall had been 'ten years a Newlyner