Lot 39: GEORGE PRICE BOYCE, R.W.S. (1826-1897) ON THE THAMES BETWEEN STREATLEY AND PANGBOURNE

signed, inscribed with title and the artist's address on a label attached to the backboard, watercolour 12.5 by 23.5 cm.; 5 by 9 1/4 in. The present watercolour shows an evening view across the Thames towards Streatley Hill, and was probably done in the late summer of 1865. George Price Boyce had taken to making painting expeditions along the river between Reading and Oxford in 1859, and was particularly fond of the villages of Mapledurham, Pangbourne and Streatley. His two best known works, Streatley Mill at Sunset (ex Sotheby's, 25 November 1987, lot 35) and The Mill on the Thames at Mapledurham (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), of 1859 and 1860 respectively, were both inspired by the ancient buildings and verdant landscape of the upper Thames valley. During the 1860s Boyce adopted a more informal and less highly literal approach to landscape subjects; in drawings such as the present view of Streatley colours are allowed to blend harmoniously and emphasis is given to the qualities of light observed at different times of the day. On the Thames between Streatley and Pangbourne was exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society in 1866, along with two other Thames subjects and among a total of seven works by G.P. Boyce. Although only the third occasion on which he had exhibited there, he was already emerging, along with Alfred William Hunt, as one of the most remarkable younger talents within the society. It was on this occasion that the critic of the Art Journal analysed the feeling for nature that these two artists showed in their drawings: "Such artists find sermons in stones, and good in everything. Fire oft times they throw into the face of Nature, yet light and colour do they attempter by shade." (AJ, 1866, p.174). Boyce himself was, according to the same review, "singular in the choice of his subjects, inasmuch as he loves to plant his sketching stool just where there is no subject. Yet does he manage to make out of the most unpromising materials a picture which for the most part is clever and satisfactory." (Ibid., pp.174-5) A similar view on the Thames looking towards Streatley Hill was included in the Tate Gallery's Boyce exhibition of 1987, number 43, lent from a private collection. PROVENANCE Henry Tamworth Wells, R.A. (the artist's brother-in-law); Joanna Margaret Charrington; Mrs Wilfred Hadley (1923); Dr Margaret Jackson, and by family descent. EXHIBITED London, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1866, no.269; London, Tate Gallery, Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings of the 1860 Period, 1923 (80).