Stanhope Alexander Forbes, RA

(British, 1857-1947)

The Morning Room

Footnotes

Exhibited
London, Royal Academy, 1913, no. 234.

Literature
Royal Academy Pictures, 1913, p. 95.

The present lot is an exciting rediscovery, having previously only been known from a black and white illustration in Royal Academy Pictures. By the early 1900s Stanhope Forbes was a major figure in the British Art establishment. He was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, as well as at rival academies, and his School of Painting in Newlyn was re-invigorating interest in West Cornwall, following an early surge of popularity in the 1880s, when many artists came to settle in the area. Forbes's own output was consistently high, with a number of significant outdoor compositions such as Chadding in Mount's Bay (1902), The Seine Boat (1904) and Gala Day at Newlyn (1907).

As the decade concluded Forbes produced an increasing number of interior compositions and portrait commissions. Having been elected a full academician in 1910, Forbes produced a sumptuous interior The Harbour window (Royal Academy, 1911, no. 264, fig 1) for his Diploma submission. Here, the model sits sewing, illuminated by a sunlit window, the light picking out details of the sitter's dress, and the spools of yarn on the table.

This motif of a female figure in a light filled interior is one that Forbes returns to a number of times during this period, the present lot, and a 1914 work Through the looking glass (Royal Academy, 1914, no. 185, sold Sotheby's, London, 14 December 2006, lot 172) being prime examples. Painted during a difficult time for Forbes, having lost his first wife Elizabeth to cancer, aged just 52, in the previous year, in The Morning Room light streams through the glazed door, illuminating the figure who sits writing at a desk. The sunlight picks out the colours of the potted flowers, throwing light onto the floor. Light from a second window further illuminates the sitter, and, as with The Harbour Window, the sitter's white dress allows Forbes to demonstrate his skill at portraying the effects of light on shape and texture.

As Caroline Fox notes 'some interiors of this period, such as The Morning Room [and] Through the Looking glass... bear similarities to the women in interiors painted by Harold Knight and Harold Harvey at about the same time'¹. Both Knight and Harvey were part of the artistic milieu in West Cornwall in the early years of the 20th Century, and Forbes, while very much the Father of Newlyn, was not immune to the influences around him.

¹ Caroline Fox, Stanhope Forbes and Newlyn School, Newton Abbot, 1997, p. 89.