Edward Atkinson Hornel 1864-1933

Fine Art Society, London, 1950;
Dr Robert Yule;
Private collection

'He paints the gamins of Kirkcudbright as Murillo painted those of Seville, with the uncompromising fidelity not of the satirist but of the true nature-lover for whom the unkempt, ragged urchin concerned in the manufacture of mud-pies is lovelier than the daintiest suburban miss in pink muslin and artificial curls... frank records of peasant children with faces lovely as rose petals.' (E. Rimbault Dibdin, 'Mr. E. A. Hornel's Paintings of Children and Flowers' in Studio, 1907, Vol. XLI, No. 171, p. 4)

The theme of spring-time and its symbolic associations with childhood, was re-ocurrent throughout Hornel's career and groups of girls picking flowers or dancing amid blossom-laden boughs, was the subject of some of his best work, including The Coming of Spring of 1899 also known as Fair Maids of February (Kelvingrove Art Gallery), Roundelay of Spring of 1910 (private collection) and Primrose Day of 1926 (private collection). As his friend, Ernest Dibdin pointed out in 1907; 'He has painted many other things, notably birds, lambs, and other children of the four-footed sort... his chief business is with children and flowers - the most perfectly melodious facts in the visible world of beauty, and therefore the best adapted to this method of composition. They are his melodies, to be woven into complex beauty with the harmony and counterpoint of his colour. I do not always see facts as he draws them, but that is because facts are less important to him than the radiant and fascinating fantasies that he weaves from them.' (ibid Dibdin, pp.8-9)

Unlike other painters who specialised in painting children, Hornel did not believe that the best way to keep his young models under control was to distract them from mischief with lollipops, relatives or fairy-stories. Instead Hornel and his wife Tizzy transformed the grounds of Broughton House, their lovely old home in Kirkcudbright into a beautiful garden full of flowers all year round, into which the local Galloway children were only too keen play amongst the blooms and be observed by the artist at work, 'Thus his pictures are always spontaneous, full of daylight and lovely in colour. There never was a more thorough-going impressionist.' (ibid Dibdin, p.9). Visitors to the Hornels' walled garden were treated to; 'An Eastern Garden . this was clearly the artist’s own dominion, a place apart from the conventional villa garden, landscaped with exotics to remind Hornel of his travels . It was planted with pink Japanese wind flowers, with flagged paths meandering between clumps of golden maple, Japanese dwarf pines, a lily pond with stepping stones watched over by a lead flamingo, a grove of flowering cherry trees, a magnolia’ (Stephen Harvey, 'An Eastern Garden', in Scottish Field, March 1977, p.24) The paths through the garden at Broughton led the visitor through the manicured formal flower-beds close to the house, down-hill to the wilder parts of the garden on the banks of the river Dee. It is here, beneath the cherry blossom, on the primrose carpeted banks of the Dee that Hornel painted the present picture in the same year that the Scottish Country Life visited Broughton to write an article in celebration of the garden there. The author wrote of; '... a treasury of art, impeccable taste, and irresistible effects and the efflorescence of the soul of the painter whose joyous creations have profoundly enlarged the aesthetic vision of the race.' (James Shaw Simpson, 'Broughton House, Kirkcudbright: The Residence of Mr. E. A. Hornel', in Scottish Country Life, June 1916, pp.115-116) Broughton House and its garden were given to the Hornel Trust in 1950 following the death of Tizzy Hornel and now houses a wonderful collection of her husband's work managed by the National Trust for Scotland.

The impressive size of the present work suggests that it was painted for exhibition, although it does not seem to relate to the titles of the pictures exhibited at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts in 1916. In 1917, a year after he completed Spring-time he held a one-man show at the Old Bond Street gallery of James Connell & Sons and although a catalogue for this exhibition has not been found to confirm this, it is possible that this picture was included in the exhibition.