28
34
Walter Frederick Osborne RHA ROI (1859-1903)
A CORNER OF THE FARMYARD, c.1886-1888
oil on board
signed lower right; with Arnold Wiggins & Sons [London] label on reverse
10.25 by 13.75in. (26.04 by 34.93cm)
Provenance
:
Pyms Gallery, London;
Where purchased by the present owner
Exhibited
:
‘The Irish Revival’, Pyms Gallery, London, May – June 1982, catalogue no. 3 (illustrated)
Literature
:
Potterton, Homan, ‘Irish Painters’, in
Irish America,
1990, p.64 (illustrated)
McConkey
,
Kenneth,
A Free Spirit. Irish Art 1860-1960,
Antique Collector’s Club, Pyms Gallery, London, 1990,
p.34, 36 (illustrated)
Throughout his career, as well as his other genre scenes with children and country people,Walter Osborne painted
intimate studies of nature: farmyards, cottage gardens, orchards, little woods and quiet rustic corners. He often gave them
as much attention as his more substantial subject pictures; indeed it could be said that these small paintings contain
much of Osborne’s spirit as an artist. He painted such studies of farmyards, thatched buildings and gardens in Belgium and
Brittany and equally in England and Ireland. Fine examples of this genre include
An Intruder,
1883
1
, featuring an old
cottage, chickens, ducks and a cat; and
Landscape with Child in White
(NGI cat. no. 4332), which includes a little girl and a
cabbage patch.
The present picture
, A Corner of a Farmyard,
is a painting in this genre. Osborne observes the rural details with realism,
intimacy and a distinctive sense of colour; cabbages in the foreground, chickens pecking on the grass, triangular-shaped
haystack, sunflowers, the thatched roof of a rustic barn behind the trees, and the blue sky at the top of the picture.The
humble cabbage patch was a subject represented by many naturalistic artists of Osborne’s generation; and chickens being
fed or pecking for food appear in many of his pictures, painted most convincingly.
There is an area of
pentimento
in the lower right-hand corner of the picture; Kenneth McConkey notes that Osborne had
included geese there, but then painted over them, but leaving the forms still visible
2
. Osborne employs an attractive
palette of of blue-greens, olives, grey-greens, ochres, silvers and blues, to evoke the warmth and pinkish sunlight of a
summer’s day.
The artist’s signature with squared letters, small capitals, and ‘R’S’ with long tails, may date to the mid 1880s, when
Osborne was working in English villages.
Dr Julian Campbell
September 2013
1
The Intruder, 1883
, Irish Sale, Christie’s, London, 21 May 1997, lot 150.
2
Kenneth McConkey,
A Free Spirit, Irish Art 1860-1960
, 1990, p.34
€
20,000-
€
30,000 (£17,090-£25,640 approx.)
WHYTES
SINCE 1783
,
