Footnotes

• The present lot, recently re-discovered in a private collection in the USA, is closely based upon one of Langley's major watercolours, Alone! -Borne on the swift though silent wings of time, Old age comes on apace (RI, 1890, RBSA 1899), and was most likely painted between 1890 and 1893, when Langley showed another watercolour version of Alone (exhibited Fine Art Society, where sold for £4). A charcoal drawing for Alone was exhibited in the Penlee House exhibition, 'The Magic of a Line: drawings by Newlyn School artists, September-November, 2008, which was sponsored by Bonhams.
  
  Oil paintings by Langley are relatively rare because, as The Birmingham Post reported in 1886, 'although fond of oil painting, Mr Langley's friends allow him so little release from watercolours that he is unable to follow it as much as he could wish'.¹. However, sales for Langley were bouyant from 1889 to 1890 and 'Langley felt sufficiently secure to turn his attention to paint more in oils and to hold a one-man show in London. The first ambition necessarily entailed sending in work to the Royal Academy'.² In the spring of 1892 Langley's Academy painting The widow was unveiled in Newlyn. In contrast to its original title, it featured a country mother and her daughter in front of a sunlit apple orchard. The title of this work was changed to Sunshine and shadow to better reflect the subject matter.
  
  During this period, Langley painted the present lot and a similar watercolour depicting an old lady within a dark interior, her head resting on her hand in contemplation.³ The sombre theme and tone of these works could not be more different from Sunshine and shadow. The figure of the old lady in the present lot appears as a mirror image of the woman in the watercolour version. Langley frequently revisits compositions, re-using figures and props in his works. The watercolour and the present lot both show Langley using the same interior with flower pots on the window sill.
  There is reference in Langley's records for 1891 of a painting entitled The widow, which was sold to the Birmingham dealer Starkey for £74. Langley did not record the medium of this work, although it is likely that this is the present lot, as £74 would have been the right price for an oil of this size.
  
  1. Roger Langley, Walter Langley, Pioneer of the Newlyn Art Colonoy (Bristol, 1997), p.76.
  2. Langley, op. cit., p. 91.
  3. Langley, op. cit., p. 93.
  
  We are grateful to Roger Langley for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.