Footnotes

Property of a deceased's estate.

LITERATURE: Terry Parker author of Golden Hours – The Paintings of Arthur J. Elsley 1860-1952 (Shepton Beauchamp: Richard Dennis 1998).

Morgan rarely dated his works, however Terry Parker has suggested that the present lot was painted circa 1926.

Arthur J. Elsley (1860-1952) was the junior partner in Morgan's studio in the last decade of the 19^th century. Elsley painted two similar works to A Young Gallant – Pick-a-Back (1901) which depicts a teenage girl and a younger boy paddling in a stream the girl bearing a younger girl on her back, Crossing the Stream (1920) features the artist's daughter carrying a young girl on her shoulders. Both artists painted from photographs and sketches some made years earlier.

Morgan spent most of the summers between 1886 and 1896 at Winterton-on-Sea, Norfolk, even building a studio at the rear of The Three Mariners Inn. The flat landscape and the reeds of the present lot suggests a setting near this village. Norfolk reed was grown for use in thatching.

In the present lot, a bare-footed boy is carrying a girl across the stream. She is holding yellow irises and another girl looks on from the newly harvested hay field. The same boy and girl appear in Morgan's Wagon and Horses (R.A. 1913), and the boy dressed as a boy scout is the central figure in Morgan's patriotic family scene painted during the First World War.

Morgan most likely intended this work to be exhibited at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, (London, Winter 1926). Poor health prevented him from completing it in time so he sent it for auction at Christie's, London together with a portrait of his granddaughter entitled The Lame Duck. The painting was sold on 21^st Feb. 1927 lot 126, and was bought by Milton for 8½gns (£8 18s 6d). Morgan died 3^rd April 1927.

We are grateful to Terry Parker for his kind assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.