Charles Conder

Catalogue entry

N04221 SPRINGTIME 1892
 
Inscr. ‘Charles Conder 1892’ b.l.
Canvas, 28 3/4×23 3/4 (73×59·5).
Purchased from Arthur Tooth & Sons (Clarke Fund) 1926.
Exh: (?) Salon de la Société Nationale, Paris, 1892 (255), as ‘Les Roses’; Tate Gallery, July–September 1927 (98).
Lit: Gibson, 1914, pp.35–6, 96; Rothenstein, 1938, p.259, as ‘Springtime’, but repr. facing p.84 as ‘Blossoms at Dennemont’.
Repr: Tate Gallery Illustrations, British School, 1938, p.89; Carlos Peacock, Painters and Writers, 1946, pl.49 (in colour).

The motif of this painting is similar to a larger picture, 42 1/2×31 1/2 (108×80), in a private collection in Vienna, and to ‘Apple Blossom, Dennemont’ (repr. Gibson, op. cit., pl.10), now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Rothenstein records (op. cit., p.81) that: ‘During the year 1892 Conder grew very familiar with the beautiful country about the banks of the Seine below Paris, especially the region of which Mantes is the centre. His friends took him to their favourite haunts: Anquetin to Vétheuil, Dujardin to Dennemont, and Blunt to La Roche-Guyon.’ Paintings entitled ‘May Day’ and ‘Blossom’ were exhibited at the Paris Salon de la Société Nationale of 1893 (243) and the International Society, London, May 1898 (91) respectively. See also N03423.

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