Share

License image

Harry Jones Thaddeus , Irish, 1860-1929

Title

The Friends of the Model

Date1881

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions

116 x 98 cm

Signedlower centre: H THADDEUS JONES/1881[HT in monogram]

Credit LinePurchased, 2014 (Dargan Fund)

Object numberNGI.2014.8

DescriptionPainted in the Breton fishing port and artists’ colony of Concarneau, this picture depicts the interior of the sixteenth-century Chapelle de l’Hôpital, a former hospital church made available to Thaddeus as a studio during his year-long stay in the town. The picture features several motifs that recur in the work of artists visiting provincial France at the time, among them local costume and practices, specific physical types, and the juxtaposition of ages.

Including his fencing accoutrements in the foreground, and presenting himself as provider of a private audience to his guests, Thaddeus declares himself gentleman-artist. Though slightly smaller, this painting appears to have been conceived as a companion piece to Thaddeus’s 'Market Day, Finistère' (1882; NGI.4513), with which it hung at the Paris Salon in 1882. The main female character is clearly the same in both paintings. The pictures provide a rare insight into an Irish expatriate artist’s methods and practice; while one is a broadly documentary image of everyday life in Concarneau, the other records the environment and manner in which such pictures were executed. 'The Friends of the Model' is full of detail, and celebrates the relationship between artists and the local community in France’s artists’ colonies. The picture also illustrates the practice, customarily followed by Naturalist painters, of painting figurative detail in the studio and integrating it into backgrounds studied in situ.



ProvenanceStockholms Auktionswerk, 3-5 December 2013, lot 2315; purchased, Gorry Gallery, April 2014Exhibition HistoryParis Salon, 1882, Number 1427

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1883, Number 601

Cork Industrial and Fine Art Exhibition, 1883, Number 138

New Perspectives. Acquisitions 2011 - 2020, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 11 May - 2 August 2021

Label TextIn this painting, a young Thaddeus receives visitors to his studio in the 16th-century Chapelle de l’Hôpital, a former hospital church in Concarneau. The picture features several motifs that recur in the work of artists visiting provincial France in the second half of the nineteenth century, including local costume and practices and the juxtaposition of ages. The painting appeared at the Paris Salon in 1882 alongside Thaddeus’s Market Day, Finistère (NGI.4513), which features the same young woman in Breton attire.