Between the Poplars, Sunbury (Fantin Seated)

Catalogue number: SO 0003
Artist: Edwin Edwards
Printer: Elizabeth Ruth Escombe (Ruth Edwards)
Date: 1861
Medium: Etching
Dimensions [to plate mark]: 263 x 165 mm

Subject

The trunks of two poplar trees in the foreground frame a view across the River Thames to woodland and structures in the distance. The French painter Henri Fantin-Latour is depicted sketching while sitting at the base the right-hand trunk. Inscribed on the reverse 'Edwin Edwards, Between the Poplars, Sunbury, 1861'

Towards the end of the 1860s Henri Fantin-Latour's floral still-life paintings became extremely fashionable amongst British commercial and industrial elites and the London market was a vital source of income for the painter. Ruth Edwards was Fantin's London dealer and he visited Edwin and Ruth Edwards' home in Sunbury on Thames on numerous occasions, establishing a friendship with the couple that lasted into old age. Édouard Manet also made a point of visiting Ruth Edwards on his short visit to London in 1868 and later sent her his 1875 painting Le Grand Canal de Venice (Blue Venice) in order to gauge interest in his work amongst her established network of British collectors interested in contemporary French painting.

Annotated on the reverse: ‘Between the Poplars, Sunbury (Fantin Seated), Edwin Edwards’

Printing

Printed by Ruth Edwards, c.1889. It appears that Ruth Edwards undertook the printing of the majority of her partner's work both during his lifetime and subsequently. In the late 1880s she prepared an unknown number of posthumous portfolios of Edwin Edwards early work, using plates that mostly dated from the 1860s. These impressions were printed on fine Japanese paper, laid paper or Chine Collé, and mounted singly on sheets of heavy off-white card measuring 456 x 367 mm.

History

Purchased at auction in a folio of seventeen etchings by Edwards, at Roseberys, London 17th June 2016. Conserved by Raymond McChrystal in 2024. Conservation revealed a small fault in the paper at the right edge of the platemark.

References

British Museum 1889,0508.7