Tea in the Garden

Artist Walter Frederick Osborne (1859 - 1903)

Date1902

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions132 × 217 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Lane Gift, 1912.

Object number24

Description'Tea in the Garden', which is an unfinished painting was probably painted in the summer of 1902, a year before the artist's death. Set in the garden of his neighbours, the Crawfords, in Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines, it features Miss Crawford pouring the tea. Seated on the grass are the artist's young niece, Violet Stockley, with another child, and on the bench in the background is the loosely sketched figure of an elderly lady, probably the artist's mother. This painting is one of many genre-portrait compositions of figures in a sunny, plein-air setting, which the artist painted during the last ten years of his life. Osborne worked 'alla prima' - quickly sketching in forms in fluid, impressionistic brushstrokes, which superbly capture the warm atmosphere of the afternoon with the dappled light falling through the trees. In the 1983 National Gallery of Ireland exhibition catalogue Jeanne Sheehy records a smaller version (present whereabouts unknown) inscribed, verso, 'Miss Crawford 18, Miss Stockley 9, Castlewood Avenue.

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