Irish & International Art 10th April 2017 : Click Lot Title for More info & Pictures.

signed ‘H.J. THADDEUS’ and dated 1894 lower left of centre

oil on board

63.5 x 76.5cm (25 x 30in)

3URYHQDQFH

Gorry Gallery, Dublin;

Private Collection

€6,000-9,000 (£5,217-7,826)

Though the tone and style of this painting was informed by French rustic naturalism, its subject is more likely to be English. Thad-

deus travelled extensively throughout his career, but from the mid-1880s to 1904 was based in London and conducted much of his

business in its vicinity. The character and russet tiles of the farm building on the right of the picture are certainly consistent with

southern English vernacular architecture.

The calm simplicity of the subject - farm workers discussing stock - provides a gentle contrast to the agrarian subjects for which

Thaddeus is better known. His most celebrated works include depictions of peasants in moments of heightened emotion or peril

(The Wounded Poacher (1880/1, NGI); An Irish Eviction, Co. Galway (1890, private collection; The Poachers (1890’s, private col-

lection)).

Animals are extremely unusual in Thaddeus’s work. However, on the evidence of this painting, and a portrait of the artist’s son Fred-

die with the family dog (c.1904, private collection), a tender and intimate record never intended for public scrutiny, Thaddeus was

both comfortable and competent in painting such subject matter. This picture invites comparison with the work of Joseph Malachy

Kavanagh (1856-1918), who specialised in pastoral subjects and, like his compatriot and close contemporary Thaddeus, had spent

time painting in Brittany in the early 1880’s.

Its peculiarities notwithstanding, the painting bears many of the technical hallmarks of the artist’s work. The palette, particularly the

distinctive greens, and the orange-brown of the farm building’s roof, recur throughout Thaddeus’s oeuvre. The liberal use of dark

outlines around the linear detail, meanwhile, is also characteristic of Thaddeus’s paintings in many genres, as is the assuredness of

the drawing.

For several decades, Thaddeus enjoyed considerable success and critical acclaim as a society portrait painter, befriending and serv-

ing many members of Europe’s royal, aristocratic and political elite. Alternative subjects, like this example, provided him with

welcome respite from the exacting demands of formal portraiture, and he displayed on many occasions an inclination to experiment.

In this instance, the composition is relatively unorthodox - the horizontal and dramatically foreshortened sheep pen occupies most

of the middle ground - and does not adhere to strict academic models. The picture is also larger than one might expect for such an

understated subject.

Brendan Rooney, February 2017