Erskine Nicol RSA ARA (1825-1904)
The Children's Fairing (1870)
Oil on canvas, 88 x 72cm (34½ x 28½'')
Signed and dated 1870; inscribed verso in ink

Provenance: Lady Lever Collection (WHL...

Erskine Nicol RSA ARA (1825-1904)
The Children's Fairing (1870)
Oil on canvas, 88 x 72cm (34½ x 28½'')
Signed and dated 1870; inscribed verso in ink

Provenance: Lady Lever Collection (WHL 3797), Thomas Agnew & Sons label verso, also a typed label with artist and title and 'lent by the Trustees of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight'.

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1871, Catalogue no. 1162

The 'Children's Fairing' is an exquisite example of Erskine Nicol's ability to bring the viewer into a picture, extending an open invitation to become part of the crowd. With a glance, our ears are assaulted by cheery shouts, trumpets and chatter, whilst are eyes dance from figure to figure as if seeking someone who we have lost. Yet no matter how far our gaze wanders, we are constantly brought back to the orange glimmer of the proffered fruit, the enticing look from their seller and the questioning expression of the possible buyer.

For collectors of Victorian painting, 'Children's Fairing' is a masterpiece of artistic storytelling and it is no wonder that it temporarily came to represent part of the Lady Lever Art Collection in Liverpool. So named for his wife, the true collector was Lord Leverhulme, a man who acquired over twenty thousand works of art in his lifetime. Leverhulme was the tycoon behind 'Sunlight Soap', a company which, following Leverhulme's death, merged with Dutch 'Margarine Unie' to create today's 'Unilever'.

Lord Leverhulme began to train his artistic eye as part of an ingenious marketing ploy which involved him buying paintings that he believed would appeal to the Victorian housewife. He would then reproduce images of these works in advertisements for and on the packaging of his products, thus enticing his primary market. However, from this, he developed a keen eye for skill and began to amass a collection for his own personal enjoyment, with Victorian works being his initial passion. Truly inspired by the pieces he found, Leverhulme is noted as being morally uplifted by their aesthetic, stating that "art and the beautiful civilise and elevate because they enlighten and ennoble."

Standing before 'Children's Fairing', it is hard not to hear the truth in his words. Nicol has taken a common event, one that could be brushed aside as being polluted and coarse, and made it into something sublime. The carefully rendered expression on each face reminds us of the intricacy of human emotion. The colourful fabrics bring a sense of luxury to this muddy harbour market and the waxy shine of the oranges refer our minds to the exotic. By making the mundane extraordinary, Nicol generates within us a greater understanding of the complexity of human nature - our interactions with our fellow people, the world which we have sculpted and the enigma of art itself.

Helena Carlyle, February 2019

 

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