George John Pinwell (1842-1875)
Provenance
Christie's sale of The Remaining Works of GJ Pinwell, deceased, March 16, 1876, lot 184, bought Dalziel £25 4
1895, Miss J Dalziel
Leicester Galleries, Artists Who Died Young, March-April 1938, no 16 as Strolling Players
The Fine Art Society, London, July 1948, as The Strolling Players;
J.S. Maas & Co., London, Pre-Raphaelites to Post-Impressionists, Exhibition of Drawings and Watercolours, 3-21 May 1965, no 81, as Journey's End
Exhibitions
Dudley Gallery, Water-Colour Exhibition, February 1868, no 300
Possibly Mr Deschamps' Gallery, Exhibition of Works by the Late G.J. Pinwell, February-March 1876, no 163, as Strollers - after the fair [this exhibition was held just prior to the Christie's sale and just after Fred Walker's posthumous exhibition at the same venue]
Royal Birmingham Society of Artists March 1895, no 370,
Leicester Galleries, Artists Who Died Young, March-April 1938, no 16
Maas Gallery, Pre-Raphaelites to Post-Impressionists, Exhibition of Drawings and Watercolours, 3-21 May 1965, no 81
Literature
Donato Esposito, Frederick Walker and the Idyllists, Lund Humphries, 2017, pp 65-6, ill p 65
Engraved by Charles Cousen, 1873, the engraving reviewed by the Art Journal, January 1873 (see cutting on the back of the picture, image no 2), and re-published in Modern Art, by Jules Dafforne in 1886
This early painting was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1868 when Pinwell was only 26. It was noticed by the critic of The Times, who had some advice for the young artist:
… a tired-out mountebank family discovered sleeping under a shed by a party of mowers going out to their work in early morning … by Mr. Pinwell, but for some discordant blots and spots of colour in the background would satisfy as a whole, whereas it now satisfies in part only, though its best points are in the most difficult and important parts of the picture. If Mr. Pinwell would strike out his green tree and subdue the pillar behind his group of mowers, he would give full effect to the rare merit of his figures in drawing, lighting, and expression.
Pinwell was humbly born. As the son of a builder and a laundress, he was scantily trained and had to struggle to make his way. He began by illustrating popular poems in pretty books in black and white, but in order not to waste his ideas he would work up these drawings as larger watercolours for exhibition. This is an early example; he had made the original drawing a year earlier for a woodcut illustrating a touching poem called 'Journey's End' about the discovery of an itinerant French acrobat who had died of exhaustion in the night, whilst his wife and child slept on. For the exhibited watercolour, Pinwell gave the picture a different title and resurrected the acrobat. His complexion is now healthy, his head in sleeping repose, while his arm rests along a wooden stile. The scene itself has been transposed from the Loire valley to England, where the farmhands' hats are decorated with flowers as if for May Day celebrations. French geese have become English sheep, and the sleeping performing dog has been replaced by a sheepdog in the yard. The baby, hidden in the mother's cloak in the woodcut, is visible, as is an added drum.
Pinwell died young, like Fred Walker, to whom he has often been compared. The Modern Book Illustrators of 1914 held that the charm of Pinwell's work was 'its vivid pictorial truth to life, its dramatic feeling'.