Harry Jones Thaddeus R.H.A. 1860-1929

SOLD

Old Friends

Oil on wood, 18.8 x 12.3 cm.
Signed and dated 1886, also inscribed on label verso

This diminutive picture was painted during a busy year for Thaddeus, which included time in Rome, where he painted the Superior General of the Jesuits and explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, travel around England, and commissions to paint portraits of, among others, the Grand Duchess Elena Romanov and Franz Liszt. Small, sentimental pictures like this must have provided welcome respite from the more exacting demands of formal portraiture. Thaddeus displayed throughout his career a penchant for painting elderly, bearded male figures, both as studies in their own right, or integrated as protagonists in larger, more ambitious compositions. In this case, an old man engages with what appears to be a bullfinch through the bars of the bird’s cage. Their encounter takes place in the back yard of a red-brick cottage, amidst the trappings of modest domesticity: empty bottles, a potted geranium and a small pair of garden shears. The scene represents an environment far removed from the high society on which Thaddeus relied so heavily for business.

Brendan Rooney