Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, UK.

Exhibited
Birmingham, Birmingham Art Circle Autumn Exhibition, 1884.

The simple theme is rendered with fine feeling, and the painting of the face and hands, with all the subtle modelling, is at once delicate and striking. The pathos and the poetry of humble life are here a visible poem.

The much-quoted letter in the Magazine of Art of 1898, that 'it was Birmingham that first discovered Newlyn' attests to the influence that a group of Midlands artists had on the development of an artistic colony. Of these artists, Edwin Harris was among the first to discover the corner of West Cornwall that became synonymous with British Impressionism.

Harris may in fact have discovered Newlyn before his great friend Walter Langley, Harris's biographer noting that while 'Langley is generally regarded as the "artistic father" of this small Cornish fishing village ... Mr. Edwin Harris was before him in the field, and is undoubtedly one of the very first pioneers among the Newlynites'¹.

Born in Birmingham in 1855, Harris attended Birmingham School of Art, before attending Verlat's Academy in Antwerp with fellow artist William Wainwright in 1880; he later travelled to Brittany with William Breakspeare. Although he had already had works accepted at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Harris and his contemporaries sought an alternative outlet to the more established and mainstream Academies, and co-founded the Birmingham Art Circle in 1880, intent on offering a forum for emerging artists; other founding members included Langley and Wainwright, the artists initially showing their work in their own studios, before being offered a space to exhibit by Birmingham art dealer Edward Chamberlain.

Harris was mostly working in Newlyn by 1881, and in 1883, having married Chamberlain's niece Sarah, the couple settled in Newlyn. By now the colony of artists was expanding to include, as well as Langley, Ralph Todd, Fred Hall, Frank Bramley and T. C. Gotch. Harris seems to have been at times an aloof member of the colony- perhaps not aided by his regularly returning to Birmingham during his tenure in Newlyn. Stanhope Forbes, arriving in 1884, notes in his letters that 'Everybody likes them but no one seems really intimate'; Forbes does, however, also refer to a number of pleasant evenings with the Harrises, at one of which he met his future wife, Elizabeth Armstrong². The extent of Harris's financial success seems unclear, although he remained a regular exhibitor at the RBSA, the Birmingham Art Circle and the Royal Academy, his exhibited works attracting positive reviews.

The present lot is an exceptional example of Newlyn painting during its prime period of the 1880s. Painted in 1884, the work sits alongside the best of Harris's work, and arguably matches in quality the interiors painted by Langley. In a dimly lit interior, an elderly sitter, perhaps the same model used for A Pinch of snuff (Penlee House Gallery and Museum), pauses for a moment of reflection, having received a package and a letter.

As Edgbastonia notes, this was a period in which, having just welcomed a son, Harris 'worked indefatigably ... his subjects were almost entirely confined to the lives and homes of the humble fisher folk around his studio, who he painted in the hours of happiness and in their hours of trouble, joyous and pathetic idylls'³. Rendered in exquisite detail, the work was exhibited at the Birmingham Art Circle, alongside Maidenhood and A fisherboy. A contemporary reviewer noted that 'these pictures show a healthy development of artistic power... good, solid, earnest work, without trick or artifice ... Not Forgotten... is a bit of homely pathos: an old woman, seated in her poor cottage, where her thoughts are often enough, no doubt, sad and anxious, had just received from some distant son a hamper ... and a letter that tells her her bairn, though far away, cherishes the good mother in his heart. The letter is outspread on her lap, as she polishes her spectacles to read it. The simple theme is rendered with fine feeling, and the painting of the face and hands, with all the subtle modelling, is at once delicate and striking. The pathos and the poetry of humble life are here a visible poem'.

Recognition by the RBSA came later to Harris than to his contemporaries, Harris not being elected until 1886, some five years after Langley, Wainwright and Breakspeare. As Roger Langley notes, 'it may be that his apparent preference for exhibiting at the Art Circle rather than the RBSA caused some delay in the promotion of his cause.'⁴. Given the supreme quality of the present work, it is hard to argue that his loyalty to the Art Circle may indeed have slowed his Academic recognition.

¹ Edgbastonia, Vol XIX, 1899, quoted in Caroline Fox & Francis Greenacre, Painting in Newlyn 1880-1930, London, 1985, pp.66-7).
² Ibid, p.65.
³Edgbastonia, quoted in Roger Langley, Edwin Harris 1855-1906, An Introduction to His Life and Art, Truro, 2008, p. 24.
⁴ Roger Langley, Edwin Harris 1855-1906, An Introduction to His Life and Art, Truro, 2008, p. 24.