Tea. 1894. Oil on canvas. 33 by 24 inches (84 by 61cm). Ex-Sotheby's, private collection.
Tea was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1894, no. 42. It shows a young woman offering tea from a blue-and-white teapot across a table covered with a white linen tablecloth. A Windsor chair is seen immediately behind the girl and the background consists merely of a simple decorative wall. The teapot and cups and saucers are in the willow pattern that became popular in England at the end of the 18th century, produced by English potters who had adapted motifs inspired by wares imported from China. Although Tea is only a simple subject, it is skillfully painted. The model wears a gown of the late eighteenth century and a white mob-cap that matches the collar and the end of the sleeves of her dress. Leslie was one of the first to make popular in his pictures girls wearing mob-caps, such as his Kept in School of 1876, even prior to J. E. Millais's Cherry Ripe of 1879, and before Kate Greenaway's many illustrations of young girls so attired. The model portrayed was of the type that had assured Leslie success from the start of his career. From the time of the exhibition of his first picture Hope, that he showed at the British Institution in 1857, his father C. R. Leslie had predicted "Well, at any rate you need never starve, for you can paint a pretty face" (qtd. in Meynell 234). Leslie's decision to portray his models in the costumes of the eighteenth century appealed to the late Victorian sense of nostalgia for an earlier age, which was seen as more aesthetically pleasing. Tea was yet another of the pictures showing Leslie's mature style where he aimed to "paint pictures from the sunny side of English domestic life" (Meynell 232).
This work was not widely reviewed by the critics. Interestingly, according to F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum, it appears Tea was not Leslie's first choice for a title: "Mr. G. D. Leslie will not be among the leading contributors to the forthcoming Academy Exhibition; he has only one picture, of moderate size, probably to be called Olivia, and representing a comely girl pouring out tea, and wearing an 'old-fashioned' English gown" (418).
Bibliography
Meynell, Wilfrid. "Our Living Artists. George Dunlop Leslie." The Magazine of Art III (1880) 232-36.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine-Art Gossip." The Athenaeum No. 3466 (31 March 1894): 418-19.
Created 11 August 2023