Provenance
Sir Eugene Gorman, KBE, MC, barrister and brigadier (1891-1973), circa 1920-50.
To his son, Pierre Gorman (1924-2006).
To the father of the present owner, thence by descent.
Private collection, Australia.

The present lot is a stunning example of Vicat Cole's harvest paintings, a series which commenced with the artist's 1860 painting Harvest Time (Bristol Museum and Art Gallery), a work lauded by critics as displaying 'truth to nature, breadth of treatment and general harmonious colouring'.¹ The 1860s saw Cole, a pure landscape painter in the manner of John Linnell, working in a style sympathetic to the Pre-Raphaelitism espoused by Ruskin: 'a minute attention to detail and a concentration on bright local colour and direct light with a minimum of shadow'.²

Probably painted in the Surrey Hills that Cole knew and loved, the present lot was executed in 1869, by which time the artist was highly regarded, and on the verge of being elected ARA, an accolade not to be understated, given the paucity of landscape painters represented at the time. As Tim Barringer notes, 'Cole was fortunate in laying his claim to Academic honours at a time of popular outcry concerning the Royal Academy's lack of support for English landscape painters.'³ Cole would spend the next decade of his career chasing election to full Academician, which he achieved in 1880.

¹R Chigwell, Life and Paintings of George Cole, R.A., London, 1896, vol. 1., p. 7.
²T J Barringer, The Cole Family: Painters of the English Landscape, Over Wallop, 1988, p. 79.
³Ibid. p. 84.

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- 19th Century & Orientalist Paintings