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William Teulon Blandford Fletcher (1858-
1936)
THE GOSSIPS
oil on canvas
signed lower left; with inscribed artist’s label detailing title,
artist’s address [Old Park Road, Enfield] and number [2]
preserved on reverse
19 by 29in. (48.26 by 73.66cm)
Provenance:
Martin Winter Esq., London, until 1911
Exhibited:
‘An Exhibition of 18th-21st Century Irish Paintings’, Gorry
Gallery, Dublin, 20 May to 2 June 2012, catalogue no. 28
(illustrated, p.19).
Although not an Irish artist,William Teulon Blandford Fletcher was one
of a generation of distinctive British and Irish naturalist painters active
in the 1880s amongst whom can be counted Walter Osborne, Stanhope
Forbes, Sir John Lavery, Joseph Malachy Kavanagh, Frank O’Meara and
Nathaniel Hill.
Born to a solidly middle-class family in Hampstead, London, Fletcher
battled parental opposition to train as an artist, enrolling in the South
Kensington School of Art at the age of 16. During his four years there,
he made a trip to Brittany where many artists such as Stanhope Forbes
had rejected the British studio painting tradition in favour of European
plein airrealism. Inspired by this Breton experiences Fletcher enrolled
at Varlat’s Academie Royal des Beaux Arts in Antwerp where he met
and became a close friend of fellow student Walter Osborne whom he
subsequently accompanied on a number of trips to Brittany. They are
known to have painted together in Pont-Aven, Quimperlé and possibly
Dinan. In later years they met again to paint together in the Thames
Valley villages of Oxfordshire. The similarity of their training and
proximity on these trips is reflected in their artistic output both in
terms of composition and execution.
In The Gossips, the two women, traditionally dressed in white Breton
bonnets and wooden clogs, as well as chatting are both engaged in the
day’s laundry. The distant figure has laid out white linen sheets to dry
in the gated orchard. There is a similar image of a girl amongst laid
white sheets in an orchard entitled Laundry Day by Louis Welden
Hawkins (Private Collection, Ireland), another expatriate who made the
artists pilgrimage to the wild north west of France. The figure closer to
us leaning against the richly textured and weathered wall also has
white linen in the basket at her feet, which judging from it’s unfolded
state, is probably destined for the river for cleaning. The buildings to
the right of this composition are distinctly Breton and it is interesting
to note that the overshot watermill on the far right has three wheels
powering what must have been a substantial enterprise.
Fletcher went on to live and paint in the artist’s colony of Newlyn in
Cornwall and ultimately in Abingdon in Oxfordshire where he died in
1936.
We are grateful to the Gorry Gallery for its kind permission to
reproduce this note.
€5,000-€7,000 (£4,300-£6,000 approx.)
WHYTESSINCE 1783
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