Beschreibung:

ARTHUR HUGHES (BRITISH 1832-1915)
THE CONVENT BOAT
Oil on canvas
Signed (lower right)
44.5 x 72.5cm (17½ x 28½ in.)
Provenance:
Mrs. Ann Fleming by1963
Sale Christie's, 25 March 1966, lot 145, as 'The last Farewell' (70gns)
Naylor Leyland.
Sale, Sotheby's, 26 July 1967, lot 361 (£160)
David W. Hughes.
Sale, Sotheby's, 30 October 1968, lot 118 (£190)
Colson.
Sale, Sotheby's Belgravia, 22 February 1972, lot 109 (£650)
The Fine Art Society
Michael Hasenclever.Galerie
R. Hartmann by November 1973.
Sale, Sotheby's Belgravia, 9 April 1980, lot 17 (£11,000)
Private collection, UK
Exhibited:
London,The Aesthetic Movement and the Cult of Japan , The Fine Art Society, 3-27 October 1972 (no.24, repr. p.14)
Munich, Burne-Jones und der Einfluß der Prä-Raffaeliten, Michael Hasenclever, 29 November 1972 -10 January 1973 (No.11, DM16,500, repr.)
Baden-Baden, Germany, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden 1973 (No.84, repr. colour, p.147)
Literature:
M. Amory, ed. The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, 1980, p.607.
L. Roberts and S. Wildman, Arthur Hughes His Life and Works, A Catalogue Raisonné, Woodbridge Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997, no.131.3. ill., p.184
Depictions of nuns proliferated in Victorian art. The opportunity for medievalism appealed to Victorian sensibilities but their popularity also speaks to the emergence of High Anglicanism and the conventual revival which had been cultivated by the Oxford Movement. The subject, having been relatively neglected for a couple of hundred years, was enthusiastically taken up by many of Hughes' contemporaries, including John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt
In a letter to Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh once described the present work as a "touching scene"; it shows the emotional moment in which a young novice leaves her family for the convent. The ramifications of her decision are laid bare for the viewer. Dressed as a bride of Christ, the novice's austere clothing contrasts with the sumptuous garb of those standing on the river bank. While her family lament her departure, she holds a prayer book and looks away solemnly, appearing resolute
in her choice. The deliberate negation of material wealth and familial or romantic ties was a recurrent theme in artistic and literary depictions of nuns. The works reveal a curiosity with autonomous female spaces and the eschewal of the secular world in favour of an interior, spiritual life. Indeed, we only see a small glimpse of the cloister she will be entering.
The work invokes a harmonious vision of the pre-Reformation world. Soft evening light descends over the trees and reflects serenely across the water. The convent walls, overgrown with dense ivy, suggest the institution's agedness, connecting it with England's spiritual heritage. When a larger version of this painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, critics praised Hughes' attention to organic detail and the romantic naturalism of the scene. One wrote that the picture provided the "double fascination of a scene that belongs both to the present and the past", whilst another lauded the "perception of beauty that belongs to the solemn and aged growth of undisturbed places." What is more, Hughes identified it as one of his best works in a letter to the French art critic Ernest Chesneau. The fact that the artist returned to the subject several times confirms his fondness for the composition.