Oil on canvas-board. Signed with a Monogram and dated 1909 by the artist (lower left). Further inscriptions on the back include the name of the artist and the title. Displayed in a modern composite frame. Provenance: Sotheby’s sale of Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours, Chester, Cheshire 15 Jan 1987. Illustrated on page 62 of the catalogue.Canvas board: 16 7/16 x 13 1/2 in. (41.8 x 34.2 cm.)Frame: 23 1/4 x 20 1/4 in. (59.1 x 51.5 cm.)Herdman completed a larger version of the subject which was auctioned under the title “The Joy of Summer”, dated 1906. Oil on canvas 114.2 x 91.5 cm. The picture first appeared at Sotheby’s London in 1994 and made £10,350 including buyer’s premium. The second time was Christie’s in 2006 where it made £10,800 including buyer’s premium. The third time was at Lyon & Turnbull in 2010 where it failed to sell. Our painting, the smaller version was auctioned back in 1987 but the result is not listed on the database. A native of Edinburgh, where he was born in 1863, Robert Duddingstone Herdman may be said to have continued to a second generation the combination of scholarly and artistic qualities which he inherited from his father, Robert Herdman, R.S.A., the distinguished figure and portrait painter of decades of last century. Like him his son had a University training which put him in touch with various spheres of culture, and, though never obtruded, these went to the formation of a personality, both of character and of work, which his more intimate friends, lay and professional, always associated with him. His earlier professional training was the usual course at the Trustees’ School and the Academy’s Life Class. At the latter, in 1886, he shared the Keith Prize for the best picture by a student in the Annual Exhibition, with Mr. G. Denholm Armour, and again, in the following year, with Mr. W.M.Frazer. Meantime, in 1886, a seated half-length portrait of his father, contributed with two other works to the Exhibition of that year, had made for the young artist a brilliant opening as a portrait painter; and for the earlier half of his career, his work was mainly portraiture. Following an impulse shared by many of his fellow- craftsmen of that time, Duddingstone Herdman spent the earlier months of 1891 in Paris, where at the Acade´mie Dele´cluse, under the visiting artists there, Paul Delance and George Callot, and at the studio Calorossi he was closely in touch with the Art student life of that cosmopolitan centre, and the full tide of the various movements of that date. As if to counteract the stream of modernity, he followed this up by a visit to Madrid, spent mostly in the study of the works of Titian and Velasquez. Three years later this was supplemented by a few weeks in Holland, where study in the National Museums was varied by sketching in the region of the Zuider Zee.Whether or how much it was due to the influence of those experiences it is impossible to say, ...