Completed Continental European after 1800, Dress and Textiles, Portraits: British 20th C 15 Further information sought on 'Portrait of a Girl' at Bradford Museums and Galleries

If there are some canvas manufacturer stamps on the back of the canvas it would help us narrow the field....?

I don't know the answer to that. The painting is in off-site storage so not easily accessible.

I maybe mistaken but there appears to be some writing near the edge bottom right - is there a detail of this area?

Have checked the TIFF image in close-up and there is no writing.

This is an interesting conundrum. It needs to be seen in the real.

Long experience has taught me that images can be deceptive.

We need precise information – size details, shots of the reverse, in some instances of the edges of a canvas, and of course, provenance is absolutely essential.

Curator’s observations as to the apparent age of the canvas and whether it is a regular size with a manufacturer’s stamp can also give clues.

At first sight this looks as though it could be a post-Second World War unfinished oil sketch. The handling is fresh and the face appears modern. The tight-fitting dress could be late Victorian, but the ruff collar (?) seems rather odd.

However it may have been painted 50-60 years earlier. One could only tell from handling it.

I say this partly because it has been found in Bradford.

In the late 1880s Henry Herbert La Thangue, the leader of the ‘Square Brush School’ was President of the Arcadian Art Club, formed in 1886, and he had a considerable following in the West Riding. The present work exhibits some of the characteristics of La Thangue’s manner, not just in the bold chisel-shaped brushstrokes, but in more subtle features such as the blue line which appears to have been sketched around the edge of the composition. This was normal practice when a primed, unstretched piece of canvas was fixed to a board with drawing pins. ‘Square-brush’ painters took this method from La Thangue because the support offered less resistance to brush marks. The canvas then had to be cut to size and fixed to a stretcher. Sometimes one can see drawing pinholes around the edges and the tacks are not fixed in a regular fashion as they would with a Reeves or Winsor and Newton canvas.

All of this would be important in determining whether or not the present work was by a club-member follower of La Thangue – or indeed by the artist himself. I would expect a keen amateur, like Tom Mitchell, to paint something like this – or it may even be a very early Fred Stead. We know very little about these artists, although Christine Hopper and Adrian Jenkins did carry out some useful research on the Bradford painters and the patrons in the late 1980s.

What were the comments of the curator when it was discovered in 1982?

Photographs of the back (hopefully) attached. It says:
PREPARED BY
WINDSOR & NEWTON
LIMITED (?)
83 RATHBONE PLACE
LONDON

The word LIMITED (?) appears to have been added later. It is 96 x 66.5 cm ((no frame). There are no comments recorded from 1982.

Most likely British then - we can date the canvas very accurately to circa 1883-1884 (Alec Cobbe's W&N stamp 'J' - the district letter W. was added to the stamp the following year, and the preceeding year the company became limited).

Might the girl be a ballet dancer?

I agree with Kenneth, there's a possibility it might be one of the Arcadian Club. There was an Arcadian club winter exhibition at Bradford museum in 1886 - worth consulting to eliminate the possibility it was accessioned that way.

I don't think it's by him, but Arthur Melville was employing a similar sized brush:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/portrait-of-a-woman-66147

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/mrs-graham-robertson-12788

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/223856/1/Woman-Of-Aragon.jpg

The catalogue for the 1886 winter exhibition doesn't mention the Arcadian Club - it seems to have been quite a varied exhibition including objects from the Speak collection (imitation fruit, zulu headresses etc.). I've checked the painting titles and there is nothing it might obviously be. We are wondering how sure we are it is even a girl, could it be a boy? Our collections manager thinks it looks like the Glasgow School.

A choir boy perhaps - would make sense with the collar

Many thanks to colleagues in Bradford for the images of the back of the canvas, and for their further comments. It seems that my theory of this having been painted unstretched can now be discounted.

Thanks also to Tim Williams for his very helpful notes on the dating of the canvas. And also to Al Brown for his suggestions.

The proposal that this is a Glasgow School picture is an interesting one. I agree with Tim Williams that this is not a Melville but can see why he mentions the name. The problem with Melville is that oil paintings by him are few in number in the early 1880s, and the most relevant picture – the portrait of Evie Sanderson, 1883, is lost. He began the Tate, Audrey and her Goats in 1884 – but continued working on it up until its exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1890, and perhaps beyond. Most of the other relevant oils on the BBC site are later.

I also thought of James Paterson who painted a half-length portrait of his wife in her wedding dress in 1884 (Private Collection, rep Billcliffe, Glasgow Boys, 2008, p. 143), but there the comparison ends – face, dress and everything else is different.

Then there are the girls in white by EA Walton and George Henry – but again, none of these quite fit … None for instance go in for the kind of modelling on the face that we see here.

So I come back to La Thangue and his network. Morley Roberts who considered him as the leader of the ‘Square Brush School’ (‘A Colony of Artists’, The Scottish Arts Review, vol 2, 1889, p. 73) referred to other artists at work in the Manresa Road studios who were influenced by him - JJ Shannon, Frank Brangwyn, William Llewellyn … and some of the Newlyn painters – especially Chevallier Tayler. Within a short period of time, La Thangue’s mannerisms spread like wild-fire. All of this complicates our problem with this picture – which brings me back to Bradford and the Arcadian Art Club, where La Thangue’s big In the Dauphiné was shown. I still think that this may be the best place to start.

La Thangue's 'In the Dauphiné' can be seen here:
http://www.wikiart.org/en/henry-herbert-la-thangue/in-the-dauphin-1885

As no further information has been forthcoming in the past year, I have been asked to draw a line under this discussion.

In conclusion I think it must be a young woman not a choir boy, for while the head appears boyish, the habit – albeit only sketched in – is definitely that of a late-nineteenth century dress, with a front-plaquetted bodice and a full pannier or pinafore fronted skirt, which would pull round to a bustle at the back, the brush strokes suggest as much. The collar would have been high and possibly with an edged undershirt or chemise riding above it. The style is often thought of as ‘Edwardian’, tho’ Queen Victoria was still on the throne, because Princess Alexandra, wife of Edward Prince of Wales dominated the fashion scene.

The brush work is extremely distinctive. And one can see why Martin Hopkins queries its origins, the treatment of the face and background do indeed have strong resemblances to Central European work emanating from Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century, but the Windsor and Newton stamp makes this unlikely.

Bradford itself, the Arcadian School, the history of exhibitions there and the links with La Thangue, to whose work it bears close affinities, need further investigation, but like Kenneth McConkey I would be loathe to make any attributions based on images alone.
So for now, and with thanks for Kenneth’s full consideration of the possibilities of the Square Brush School, the discussion should close.

Thanks Katharine – I'd like to leave a bit of time before closing, in case the collection want to add anything.