European & British Art
European & British Art
Arthur Hughes
Poll the Milkmaid
Lot Closed
December 15, 03:18 PM GMT
Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Arthur Hughes
British
1832 - 1915
Poll the Milkmaid
signed ARTHUR HUGHES lower right and indistinctly signed and inscribed with a poem, the artist's name and address on an old label on the reverse
oil on canvas
Unframed: 47 by 86cm., 18½ by 33¾in.
Framed: 66.5 by 105.5cm., 26¼ by 41½in.
H.J. Mack (his sale: 13 January 1965, lot 182 bought by Leger Galleries, London)
P.C. Withers, by March 1967
Hartnoll & Eyre, London
Sale: Christie's, 20 November 1970, lot 233
Sale: Christie's, 23 July 1971, lot 351, bought by Arthur Grogan
Sale: Sotheby's, 15 March 1983, lot 50 bought by Leonard Roberts by whom sold to Alan B. Gateley in August 1993; thence by descent (sale: Sotheby's, London, 23 May 2013, lot 9)
Athenaeum, 25 May 1872, p. 659
The Times, 5 June 1872, p. 6
Leonard Roberts, Arthur Hughes, His Life and Works, 1997, cat. no. 106, illustrated p. 94, colour pl. 65
The landscape for the present work was painted in the late 1860s and in 1872 Hughes reworked the foreground with the addition of the milkmaid and the calf, probably at the request of its first owner John Hamilton Trist. It was at this time that it was given the title, based upon a poem written in Dorset dialect by William Barnes:
'O Poll's the milk-maid o' the farm!
An' Poll's so happy out in groun'
Wi' her white pail below her earm
As is she wore a goolden crown.
In zummer mornens when the lark
Do rouse the little lad an' lass
To work, then she's the vu'st to mark
Her steps along the dewy grass'.