The Winter Sun [The Winter Sun in Wild Woodland] , 1891. Oil on canvas; 26¼ x 38¾ inches (66.7 x 98.4 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, London, reference no. NO1607. Image kindly released under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) licence. Click on both images to enlarge them.
North was the purest landscape painter of the Idyllists and became even more so following the death of his close friends Fred Walker and George Pinwell. In North's late works, even when figures are included, they are frequently only a minor part of the composition. In this oil North tackles one of his favourite subjects of tangled vegetation painted in a palette of subdued shades of predominantly orange and brown. A female figure is barely visible hidden by the dense undergrowth in the midground. She is fanning a fire with a blanket and smoke can be seen rising behind and above her. When the work was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1891 it was highly enough regarded to have been purchased for the Tate Gallery under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest. Despite this honour the work does not appear to have been extensively reviewed at the time.
Closer view of the women fanning a fire.
A critic for The Art Journal pointed out that an incorrect title had initially been given to the work when it was exhibited at the New Gallery: "The announcement of another purchase by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest has been made – Mr. J. W. North's picture in the New Gallery called Autumn, for which 300 guineas was paid. The title, Autumn, which was given in early editions of the catalogue, is incorrect. It should be The Winter Sun in Wild Woodland, with the motto: -
'And now sad Winter welked hath the day,
And Phoebus, weary of his yearly task,
Y' stableth his steeds in lowly lay'" (284).
This motto was taken from Edmund Spenser's "The Shepheardes Calendar XI: November." F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum was one of the few reviewers to specifically remark upon it, and he praised its colour: "The Winter Sun (62) of Mr. J. W. North depicts a thicket in its latest russet dress, with ruddy herbage and a vaporous sky saturated with rosy light. It is soft and broad, it abounds in delicate tints, and it is harmonious and tender" (611).
Catherine Hartley, in her review of pictures in the Tate Gallery, later singled out this work for praise: "It is left to say one word of the work of J. W. North, the third of this group of ideal Nature painters [Walker, Mason, North]. His picture in the Tate Gallery, The Winter Sun, is an exquisite example of his subtle and indefinite Nature-studies – scenes that are made beautiful with loving and minute rendering" (154).
Bibliography
"Art Gossip." The Art Journal New Series LIII (1891): 284.
Hartley, Catherine Gasquoine. Pictures in the Tate Gallery. London: Seeley & Co. Ltd., 1905.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The New Gallery." The Athenaeum No. 3315 (9 May 1891): 609-12.
Created 22 May 2023