Springtime, by George Vicat Cole (1833-1893), originally entitled simply Spring. Exhibited 1865. Oil on canvas. H 66.1 x W 101.7 cm. Accession no.1917.232, bequeathed by Mr James Thomas Blair, 1917. Credit: Manchester Art Gallery, via Art UK. Image is available to be shared and re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND.
Robert Chignell has written movingly about Vicat Cole's particular love of spring:
when the leaves appeared on the trees, he reminded me of some restless wild bird in a cage that longs to escape to its native woods. At such times he would dwell much on the futility of the attempts of art to equal the fresh beauties of Nature.... he would bestir himself to finish any work that kept him, and then hurry with boyish eagerness to some sweet spot in the country where he could watch and paint the yearly opening of bud and leaf. [I: 24]
In the case of this painting, he added some lines from a song in Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost to the original title: "When daisies pied, and violets blue,/ And lady-smocks all silver white,/ And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,/ Paint the meadows with delight" (Act 5, scene ii). Chignell adds,
The treatment is intensely realistic, and intentionally so. Nature presented him with a scene which to his eye was simply perfection. Could he but render it in form and colour as he saw it, he was content. His own delight in it was unfeigned, and to convey that delight to others in its entire simplicity was his aim. No intrusion of mannerism or personal idiosyncrasy should be allowed to mar his portrait of the fair face of Nature unveiled in its loveliness. The full sunlight of midday leaves little room for mystery. Every bud and leaf of the foreground shows out distinctly. The tender spring foliage, just opening, veils without hiding the branches of the trees. Not till the distance is reached does the artist yield to his love of aerial effect, and there it is as just and harmonious as the rest of the picture is exact in details. The delicate tones of spring-time pervade the painting, and reveal that subtle and truthful feeling for colour which is so remarkable in all the artist's work.... The whole picture is a poem on the spring of life.... [I: 85-86]
Chignell goes on to tell the story (which he believes to be well-founded) of how Millais admired the painting, "and persisted, against the rest of the Hanging Committee in demanding for it a good place on the line. At last, wearied out by his insistence, his colleagues gave way and bade him 'hang the picture as you like: and while you are about it, you may as well arrange the whole room'" (I: 87).
Of special interest here is the sense of the unfolding of the the seasons, with the abundance of wildflowers contrasting with the fallen leaves of autumn, still lying crisped and curled on the path, and the bent dead bracken. This same development is found in the song from which Vicat Cole quotes, which ends with the icicles of winter. Recognizing this adds a touch of poignancy to the painting. Incidentally, Vicat Cole added lines from the the last, wintry stanza of the poem to another painting of this time, Winter Scene. — Jacqueline Banerjee.
Links to related material
- Arthur Hughes's Springtime (Cornwall)
- George Vicat Cole, RA (1833-1893): A Biographical Introduction
Bibliography
Chignell, Robert. The Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole RA. Vol. I. 3 vols. London: Cassell, 1896. Internet Archive, digitised from copies in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 29 September 2022.
Springtime. Art UK. Web. 29 September 2022.
Created 30 September 2022