Lot 45: Arthur Hughes (1830-1915)

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Description: Arthur Hughes (1830-1915)
A Passing Cloud
'O how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun
And by and by a cloud takes all away'

Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona
signed 'Arthur Hughes' (lower right) and inscribed as title (on the reverse) and further signed 'Arthur Hughes, Eastside House, Kew Green'
oil on canvas
38 1/2 x 24 1/2 in. (98 x 62 cm.)

Notes: A letter, sold with the picture, from Arthur Hughes to Margaret Finch, dated 8 September 1908 reads:

Kew Green

I am so delighted to know how much you like my picture, but cannot tell you how glad I am. I like it myself and rather think it among my better things. I know that altho' they always I hope mean well, some turn out middling at last.

But, but, I cannot accept £75 for it from you, so please forgive me for so enclosing the cheque; and my proposal is that you write one for £60 - now that will be meeting your most generous mind quite satisfactorily, and more to me a great deal.

Your idea of taking the picture home with you is truly comic: and instead of that, you must let me have the address of the new abode, and I shall forward it straight there in a case, safely and properly I trust, about the time that your Staines treasures reach it. And now dear Margaret, about the price: this is the final word.

Provenance: Purchased for £60 in September 1908 by Margaret Finch, and thence by descent.

Exhibited: London, Fine Art Society, Cabinet Pictures Illustrating Byways of Cornwall &c, by Arthur Hughes, 1900, no. 39.
Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Annual Spring, Works of Modern Artists, 1902, 100 gns.
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, and London, Leighton House, Arthur Hughes: Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1971, no. 33.

Literature: F.G. Stephens, 'Mr Arthur Hughes's Landscapes', Athenaeum, 14 July 1900, p. 64.
R. Gibson, 'Arthur Hughes at Cardiff and Leighton House', Burlington Magazine, December 1971, pp. 758, 761.
L. Roberts, Arthur Hughes, His Life and Works, A Catalogue Raisonné, 1997, no. 328, pp. 225-6, illustrated.