Lot 521: OIL PAINTING: MARGARET SCOTT (PEGGY) SOMERVILLE

OIL PAINTING: MARGARET SCOTT (PEGGY) SOMERVILLE (1918-1975) APRIL SHOWERS signed and dated 1929, signed and dated again, inscribed with the title and artist's address, The Old Ford Farm, Ashford, Middlesex on a label verso, artist's board, 25 x 30cm Provenance: Hugh Stokes. Exhibited: Claridge Gallery, London 1929. Hailed as a child prodigy, it was inevitable that Peggy Somerville's early pictures would sharply divide opinion. Sir John Lavery said he was "completely mystified by [her] extraordinary genius" and the leading critic and art historian Mary Chamot thought "the pictures small in size, but vital in spirit..." R H Wilenski thought otherwise, her pictures being "like those of her 50,000 adult colleagues... a shocking degradation of the original art of Constable". April Showers may be compared with The Cornfield exhibited at the ROI in 1929 and illustrated Reiss (S), Peggy Somerville An English Impressionist, Woodbridge 1996, p30.