Henry Singleton RA 1766-1839
''The Industrious Cottage Wife''
oil on canvas
61 x 46 cm.
A woman in simple clothes, sitting outside a cottage, left foot raised on the front step, spooling thread, looking to the left at a young boy who passes holding a shallow platter, accompanied by three piglets, landscape with a church spire in the background.
Provenance
Christies Stencil number : ''71KY''
Exhibited
Royal Academy 1803
Literature
Engraved, 1803, Charles Turner (1774-1857) color mezzotint and etching
Notes
This painting depicts a scene in front of an inn door. The seated woman is spinning wool while she is supervising her son who is feeding their pigs. The figures are shown in late eighteenth-century dress, which would have been considered slightly old-fashioned at the time of painting this picture. This emphasises the sentimental tone of the picture. Genre scenes of this type are influenced by the style of artists such as George Morland (1763–1804)
...and Francis Wheatley (1747–1801). The quality and style of the painting indicates that it was made for reproduction. This painting was reproduced as an engraving Engraved coloured mezzotint and etching in 1803, Charles Turner (1774-1857) it was widley circulated and the print is housed in many museum collections.
Genre painting developed particularly in Holland in the seventeenth century. The most typical subjects were scenes of peasant life or drinking in taverns, and tended to be small in scale. In Britain William Hogarth’s modern moral subjects were a special kind of genre, in their frankness and often biting social satire.
Simpler genre painting emerged in later eighteenth century in for example George Morland, Henry Robert Morland and Francis Wheatley. Genre painting became hugely popular in the Victorian age following the success of the brilliantly skilled but deeply sentimental works of Sir David Wilkie.
Confusingly, the word ‘genre’ is also used in art to describe the different types, or broad subjects, of painting. In the seventeenth century five types – or ‘genres’ – of painting were established, these were: history painting; portrait painting; landscape painting; genre painting (scenes of everyday life) and still life. These genres were seen by the art establishment as having varying levels of importance, with history painting (the painting of scenes from history, the bible or literature) as the most important genre, and still life (paintings of still objects) as the least important.
The new school of painting of everyday life that emerged to great acclaim in Britain during the period spanning the Napoleonic Wars and the Great Reform Bill. Initiated by David Wilkie''s ''Village Politicians'' of 1806, and reaching a monumenlal summation almost twenty-five years later in the work of Benjamin Robert Haydon, this movement registered the deeply ambivalent feelings of a nation in the throes of accelerating economic growth and of conflict both at home and abroad: what emerges from the imagery of its most ambitious artists is a widespread sense that the traditional boundaries between country and city are in the process of dissolving, and that a more regularised present is everywhere encroaching upon the customary past. In its fascination with the compression of space and time, early nineteenth-century British genre painting locates itself at the start of a trajectory linking the art of the Age of Revolution with the postmodern culture of the present day.
Artist biography
Henry Singleton (19 October 1766 – 15 September 1839) was an English painter and miniaturist.
Henry Singleton was born in London, England, into an artistic family. He was not yet two years old when his father died, so he was raised by his uncle William Singleton (d. 1793), who had studied under the tutelage of Ozias Humphry and painted portraits and miniatures. Another uncle,
Internal Reference: 4783
Antique ID Number (AIDN): SA982332
Dateline of this antique is 19th Century
Height is 61cm (24.0inches)Width is 46cm (18.1inches)Depth is 2cm (0.8inches)
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