Harry Jones Thaddeus R.H.A. 1860-1929
Native American in Headdress
Pencil and watercolour, heightened with white on paper, 32.5 x 21 cm.
In 1907, Thaddeus left Wales, where he had been based with his family for five years, for America. He spent time in New York, Philadelphia and Salt Lake City before moving on to California, where he divided his time over the next decade between Coronado and Carmel, south of San Francisco.
Though he was busily employed in the United States, having laid the foundations for a career there on numerous previous visits, relatively few works from this period are known. Those pictures that have been identified include formal portraits of eminent American sitters, and a small number of signed watercolours. Among these is a study of a native American encampment (private collection), which compares usefully in size, subject and technique to the current work. How Thaddeus found himself among these communities is unknown, but his focus on their costume and circumstances recalls studies he produced in both North Africa and the west of Ireland in the late 1880s and 1890s.
Brendan Rooney