Walter Frederick Osborne, R.H.A.

Richard Green, London

Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1885, no.96.

Dublin University Review, Art Supplement, March 1885, p.12;
Jeanne Sheehy, Walter Osborne, Cork, 1974, no.116, p.118;
Ian Collins, Making Waves, Artists in Southwold, Norwich, 2005, p.71, illustrated.

The colours are slightly richer than the illustration suggests. The canvas is lined. There are some feint old lines of surface craquelure scattered through the sky and sea and some very fine lines in the foreground and to the central child's back, otherwise in good overall condition. Under utlraviolet light, there are some small areas of retouching in the corners and along the edges and some small flecks of retouching scattered through the sky and sea. There are also some small flecks in the foreground and in and around the central group of boys. Held in a plaster gilt frame.
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After spending the years 1881 until early 1883 studying at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts Antwerp, and much of 1883 working in Brittany, Walter Osborne moved to England. He spent part of each year from 1884 – c.1891 painting in small towns and villages in the English countryside and on the coastline, often in the company of fellow artists such as Nathaniel Hill, Edward Stott and Blandford Fletcher. In 1884, the year of the present work, he worked at Lincoln, at Walberswick and Southwold in Suffolk, and at North Littleton, near Evesham in Worcestershire.

In England, as well as painting small landscape studies, he painted two series of pictures on middle-sized canvases: paintings of children in the open air, and pictures of children with pets in interiors. Generally, one or two figures are included, involved in an encounter, a conversation, the feeding of animals, or some rural activity. In his genre scenes of Flanders and Brittany, Osborne had also included the figures of children in village and rural settings. But in his English paintings the figures have become larger, and are more dominant in the composition.

Several of these pictures have only re-appeared on the market in recent years, giving us a much fuller idea of Osborne's English oeuvre of the mid-1880s. This was an immensely productive period for the artist, and these paintings are amongst the most intense and perfectly-realized ones of his career. They combine aspects of Victorian genre painting with the contemporary Realism of France and Belgium. Sometimes there is a gently humorous or moral aspect to the paintings. Osborne's particular focus on children, the precision of his observation, the sweetness of his colouring, and his employment of textured brushstrokes, give his work a distinct individuality.

A Tale of The Sea, 1884, belongs to this series. It shows a group of boys in a harbour-side setting. It is striking in the fact that it includes a group of children, rather than just one or two, in its sunlit Realism, and its brown and grey tonality. Although not the largest of Osborne's English paintings, it has an impressive sense of scale, and attention to detail in every part of the composition.

As confirmed by Ian Collins and David de Krester, the picture is set at Walberswick and the work gives a valuable picture of this Suffolk village in the 1880s, showing boys in their simple clothing and cheerful sun hats on the old timber pier. While other features of Walberswick, including the river estuary, the footbridge over it, or the jetty beside it were depicted by other artists in the colony, Osborne is unusual in his detailed and heroic representation of the pier, now levelled, and the fishing fleet moored beside it. He paints in a robust Realist style, giving equal attention to each part of the picture, and using impastoed surfaces.

When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in 1885, the critic of the Dublin University Review praised the sunlit subject from the  'artist's recent visit to Suffolk. There is much knowledge of boy character in this picture. The feeling of atmosphere about the distance is admirably rendered...' (Dublin University Review Art Supplement, March 1885, p.12).

Three boys are depicted in the foreground conversing. They are wearing rough white smocks, straw hats and dark trousers, with baskets beside them. A fourth child is seated behind. Artists were quick to observe such boys, in Brittany, as around the coast of England, who were waiting to assist the fishermen, to help them unload their catch, and to carry it to the village, or to the processing building. The title of Osborne's picture refers to the boys, two of whom are listening to a third, who sit with bare feet and points his arm, apparently telling a story. But here there seems to be more talk than action or experience, and the baskets are empty.

There are links between A Tale of The Sea and other contemporary Suffolk paintings by Osborne. For example, An October Morning, (Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London), painted c. 1885 – 1886, shows a girl and a boy on the beach at Southwold, with other children and the old wooden jetty behind. As in the present picture, an over-turned fish basket lies on the ground. Playing on The Shingle (fig.1, Private Collection), also features a boy and a girl seated on the beach beside old timber posts. Their costumes are similar to those of the children in the above-mentioned paintings. Sunlit buildings are shown in the background, and it is possible that this may be the painting entitled Walberswick, Early Morning exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1885.

A Tale of The Sea also has affinities with the slightly larger canvas, The Poachers. Although the setting in the latter picture is different, showing a meadow with wiry bushes rather than a coastal subject, there is a similar balance between standing and seated boys. They likewise wear rough smocks and straw hats. Moreover, the gesture of the pointing arm, and the overturned basket, echo those in the present work. It is possible that Osborne made use of preparatory drawings or photographs in the preparation for these paintings and it is likely that he used some of the same children as models, indicating that The Poachers is also a Suffolk subject. Moreover, it is executed with the same careful Realism as A Tale of The Sea; both pictures were exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1885.

Scenes of fishing folk at the harbour-side or on the beach were popular in Victorian painting: from the paintings of John Joseph Jenkins and to the works of Osborne's contemporaries such as William H. Bartlett, or Forbes and Langley at the Newlyn School. Often an elderly figure, a retired sailor, is shown sitting on a sea wall, recounting his experiences to younger listeners.

Yet, with Osborne's emphasis upon children, A Tale of The Sea has links with an earlier tradition in 19^th Century painting; with William Mulready's series of mischievous children, for example, or George Smyth's scene of fishing, Another Bite, (1854, Victoria and Albert Museum); with John George Brown's paintings of youths standing sturdily in the street. In particular, there are affinities with the paintings of fisher boys with rough shirts and straw hats working or idling upon the beach in sunshine by American artist Winslow Homer.

A Tale of The Sea also contains surprising references to the celebrated painting The Boyhood of Raleigh, (fig.2, 1869 – 70, Tate Collection, London) by the Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais. Osborne may have seen this at the Millais exhibition at the Fine Art Society in London in 1881 or have owned a print of it. There are similarities in the seaside setting, and in details such as the outstretched arm and bare feet of the story-teller, the model boat that lies on the ground, and the seagulls that fly above the waves. Moreover, the attentive features of Osborne's small boy seated on the left are not dissimilar to those of the young Raleigh, or to other profile portraits by Millais.

However, Osborne was interested in contemporary life rather than an historical subject, and A Tale of The Sea lacks a central older figure. He eschews Millais' rich palette, for more earthy colours, and favours a Realist style. There is a plain down-to-earth quality in the boys who wear simple clothes and straw hats. The standing youth, with impassive expression and hand in pocket, is very much a modern figure.

Although painted in England, Osborne exhibited the painting at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, rather than in London, in Spring 1885, along with The Poachers and other Suffolk paintings. The writer in The Freeman's Journal stated that 'Mr. Osborne proves by his most admirable works that the expectations formed of him have not been disappointed' (Freeman's Journal, 12 March 1885, p.6).

Until recently, A Tale of The Sea was known generally by a small black-and-white reproduction. Its recent re-emergence onto the auction market gives a more complete picture of Osborne's oeuvre in England, and provides valuable new insight into his development as a painter.

Julian Campbell