An October Morning
Artist
William Stott of Oldham
(1857 - 1900)
Date1880s
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions38 x 55 cm
Framed: 55 x 70 x 7 cm
Framed: 55 x 70 x 7 cm
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery.
Donated by A. and R. Gregory in Memory of Count Florimond de Basterot, 1905.
Object number545
DescriptionGeorge Moore enquired of Stott:'Do you think that he would have painted the beautiful picture ... a hill-side with two paths meeting on the hill-top, and some trees seen against the sky, if he had remained in Oldham'. (Municipal Gallery of Modern Art 1908 Catalogue, p. 13).
Stott's charming landscape, 'An October Morning' probably painted at the entrance to Grez-sur-Loing, is a perfect example of the 'plein air' style as practised at Grez in the early 1880's. Stott and O'Meara enjoyed autumnal scenes with overcast skies and rich glowing colours (Stott using browns, greens and deep blues, darker tones than O'Meara). As in O'Meara's 'Towards Night and Winter' (see Object Number 26), autumn leaves are scattered upon the grass. The two artists used high horizons and here (as in 'Evening in the Gatinais) a frieze of wintry trees.
'And of all noble sweeps of roadway, none is nobler on a windy dusk, than the high road to Nemours between its lines of talking poplar'. (Robert Louis Stevenson, 'Fontainebleau: Village Communities of Painters', Magazine of Art, 1884.)
(Catalogue Entry [14]: Julian Campbell, 'Frank O'Meara and his contemporaries 1853 - 1888' - Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1989, p. 55)
The son of a mill owner from Oldham in the North of England, William Stott achieved favourable attention at the Paris Salon where he exhibited regularly. A follower of Whistler, their relationship was to sour with Stott’s 1887 painting The Birth of Venus which showed Whistler’s mistress naked. Known particularly for his landscape paintings which led him to being acknowledged as an important British Impressionist painter, his later work was more decorative, deriving its theme from myths and legends. The artist died at the young age of 42 during a sea crossing to Ireland. (JO'D)
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