Lot 351: George John Pinwell, R.W.S. (1842-1875)

Study for 'The Fiddler and the Flower Girl' signed with monogram (lower left) pencil, watercolour and bodycolour 43/4 x 6 in. (12.1 x 15.3 cm.) PROVENANCE The Artist's Studio sale, Christie's, London, 16 March 1876, lot 36 (1 gn to Hardcastle). Harold T. Hartley. William Newall; Christie's, London, 30 June 1922, lot 64, (8 gns to Nicoll). Mrs M.E. Nicoll; Christie's, London, 14 December 1976, lot 136. with The Maas Gallery, London, from whom acquired by the present owner in 1982. EXHIBITION London, Deschamps, Works by the late George John Pinwell, 1876, no. 6. Birmingham, Royal Society of Artists, 1895, no. 367. NOTES This is a study for the finished watercolour which was sold in Pinwell's studio sale in these Rooms, 16 March 1876, lot 178, and which was exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water Colours in that year. Pinwell worked closely with Frederick Walker, and both were much admired for their depictions of rural life and urban street scenes. Pinwell began to exhibit watercolours at the Dudley Gallery in 1865 and he was elected as a Member of the Old Water-Colour Society in 1870. Van Gogh remarked that Pinwell 'was such a poet that he saw the sublime in the most ordinary, commonplace things.' This poetry is much in evidence in this sketch. The fiddler passes only haltingly by the flower girl, although she seems absorbed in her own thoughts.