Walter Frederick Osborne RHA ROI (1859-1903)
A Bit of Sutton Courtney - A Village by the Thames
Oil on panel, 41 x 32cm (16 x 12½'')
Signed; inscribed verso

Provenance: The Rowley Gallery...

Walter Frederick Osborne RHA ROI (1859-1903)
A Bit of Sutton Courtney - A Village by the Thames
Oil on panel, 41 x 32cm (16 x 12½'')
Signed; inscribed verso

Provenance: The Rowley Gallery stamp verso, 87 Campden Street, Kensington Church Street, London, whence purchased in the 1920s; hence by descent.

Exhibited: The Dublin Art Club, 1887, Catalogue No.129.

Literature: Sheehy, Jeanne, 'Walter Osborne', Gifford & Craven, Ballycotton 1974, p.121, no.174; Bodkin, Thomas, 'Four Irish Landscape Painters', Dublin and London, 1920, Appendix XI, p.133; le Harival, Adrian and Michael Wynne, 'Acquisitions, 1984-86, National Gallery of Ireland', Dublin, 1986, p.68, illustrated fig.60b.

(note: Osborne titled this picture with the spelling Sutton Courtney and this spelling will be used when referring to the painting. The correct spelling of the village is Sutton Courtenay.)

Journeying along the river Thames, Cork-born artist Robert Gibbings wrote in 1940 that: Suttons Pool by Sutton Courtenay is a fairy world of falling waters. By moonlight it is a setting for the rarer moments in life. Gibbings did not linger in the village, leaving the last golden hours of evening to the boys fishing on the weirs (1).

In 1887, Walter Osborne had stayed at Sutton Courtenay (then in Berkshire but today in Oxfordshire) and painted the present picture A Bit of Sutton Courtney, A Village by the Thames. It shows a boy leaning against a wooden railing, fishing, while across the river a woman stands and tall red buildings are lit by sunlight. Walter Osborne observes the scene meticulously and the picture has a wealth of detail and a strong human presence. In spite of its rural setting, the painting is aflame with warm, glowing reds and browns, almost unprecedented in Irish art at this time.

Having earlier studied in Dublin and Antwerp and painted in Brittany, Osborne spent much of the second half of the 1880s working in English villages and towns, painting a series of village, farming and coastal scenes. These are some of the finest pictures of his career. He painted much in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, for instance at Newbury, Uffington, Didcot and on the Downs. Sometimes he had the company of fellow artist Blandford Fletcher and his friend from Dublin, writer Stephen Gwynn, was in nearby Oxford, 1882-1886, and was teaching at Bradfield School in 1888 (2).

Sutton Courtenay was a tranquil and picturesque village just south of Abingdon and north of Didcot, situated in a curve in the river Thames. It had been settled by the Saxons, who built a causeway on the river. In the twelfth century, the village took the name of the Courtenay family, who lived in the manor (3). All Saints Church and other fine buildings date from later centuries (4). In the mid-19th century, many villagers were employed in the local paper mill and in domestic service. The most striking features of the village were the causeway and weirs that separated the millstream from the Sutton Pools and Osborne was attracted to the streams where boys fished.

From his early days in Ireland, he had depicted several pictures of lads fishing in a stream or canal (5). In A Bit of Sutton Courtney, the figure is placed close to the viewer, leaning against a wooden fence. He holds a fishing rod and looks down at the river. He wears a kind of deer-stalker hat, white shirt and brown waistcoat. Sunshine falls upon his cheek and sleeve. His figure is viewed from behind and his legs are cut by the lower edge of the picture, suggesting a photographic influence. Across the river, a woman with hat and violet apron stands upon the river bank looking at the barge. Even though the figures are separated by the river, visual and, perhaps, emotional affinities between them are evoked both looking down and both holding a rod or a stick.

There is a wealth of detail in the scene: the rough grain of the sturdy wooden fence, with an upright post just visible behind the boy's legs; the reflections and ripples in the river and the little fishing float; the tall buildings with steep roofs, including the uneven structure of the barn and an old cart with large wheels. Although the sky in the background is overcast, here Osborne was inspired by the rich tones of English buildings that glowed warmly in the sunshine: reds and russets of brick walls, brown of timber and maroons of roof tiles, as well as ochre clay and verdant foliage. A Bit of Sutton Courtney is enlivened further by little points of colour; the mauve of the womans apron, reds, greens, blues, whites and yellows in the barge and reflected in the water; the stripes of the upright post; red in the boys cheek and pocket; the mauve patch on the railing; and the blue of the float.

Equally, Osbornes brushwork is lively and varied: crisp and controlled in some areas, fluid and expressive in others. The square brush style is employed, for example, in parts of the boys clothing, the womans apron and the walls of the barn. Meanwhile, the ripples are painted in a softer, more lyrical way and parts of the foliage and undergrowth are more blurred, for instance, in the rough grass draped over the river bank.

If we look closely at the painting, we notice an interesting detail: the impastoed brushstrokes that depict the fence are visible beneath the figure of the boy. This suggests that Osborne may have added him to the picture at a later date than the landscape. This was not an unusual practice amongst painters, such as Canaletto or Caspar Friedrich (6), but Osborne may have decided to include the figure to give a greater sense of focus, psychological interest and human warmth to his composition. The motif of the figure, viewed from behind, looking into the picture, the Rückenfigur of German Romanticism, can be seen in the paintings of Caspar Friedrich and in Realist pictures by François Bonvin, Henri de Braekeleer and Joseph M. Kavanagh. As in several Osborne pictures of the period, for instance Counting the Flock, 1887 (sold at Adams, 30th May 2018) (7), the figure viewed from behind is an individual, but also an archetype, engaging the viewer and adding a sense of mystery.

A Bit of Sutton Courtney is painted on a wood panel and is signed lower right with the squared capital letters which the artist employed in this period. Osborne exhibited the picture at the Dublin Art Club (of which he was a co-founder), in 1887, modestly priced at twelve guineas. He made a tiny pencil drawing after the painting, the figure being outlined in ink (in sketchbook in NGI, catalogue number 19, 202, p.14).

Sutton Courtenay continued to attract Irish and other artists and writers. John Lavery painted Asquith in an 1891 Elizabeth boat on the river in 1917 (Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane). George Orwell fished there as a boy. Francis S. Walker illustrated a book on the Thames in 1891 (8) and, as noted above, Robert Gibbings passed through Sutton Courtenay and wrote lyrically about it.

 

I am very grateful to Niamh MacNally, Anne Hodge and Andrew Moore, National Gallery of Ireland; John Hutchinson; and Maria OMahony for assistance in my research.

Julian Campbell, January 2019

 

1) Robert Gibbings, Sweet Thames Run Softly, London 1940, p.106.
2) Jeanne Sheehy, Walter Osborne, NGI, 1983, p.77; and J. Sheehy, Walter Osborne, Ballycotton, 1974, p.22.
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Courtenay
4) Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Berkshire, Penguin 1966, All Saints Church and the Norman Hall were built in the late 12th century, and the Abbey about 1300.
5) Eg. A Glade in the Phoenix Park, exhibited RHA 1880.
6) Canaletto seems to have painted the background of his Grand Canal series first, then added the figures afterwards. See also Joseph M. Kavanaggh, Sheep in a Snowy Field, 1895, where the horizon line is visible beneath the bodies of the sheep. (Exhibition of Irish Paintings and Sculptures, Gorry Gallery, Dublin 2018, no.50.)
7) See Counting the Flock, 1887, Important Irish Art, Adams, 30th May 2018, lot 32; and Newbury, 1887; Joe the Swineherd, 1890; and The Railway Station, Hastings.
8) William Senior, The Thames from Oxford to the Tower, with illustrations by Francis Sylvester Walker, London 1891.

 

View more View less