William Rothenstein

(1872-1945) Thomas Hardy

1900

Sanguine and pastel on paper

11 3/8 x 11 3/8 in. (28.9 x 28.9 cm)

Provenance

Gifted by the artist to Mrs Frances Cornford (granddaughter of Charles Darwin);
Thence by family descent, until sold in 2021.

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This portrait depicts one of the most renowned figures in English literary history, the prolific novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s distinguished output has inspired generations of writers, poets and artists. His novels, laden with pervasive fatalism, influenced many authors including William Butler Yeats, Siegfried Sassoon, and Virginia Woolf, who described him as ‘a profound and poetic genius, a gentle and humane soul.’ Hardy is depicted here by the artist, lecturer and writer Sir William Rothenstein who became a staunch advocate for the display of art in public places and the democratisation of the arts.

Rothenstein was the fifth of six children born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford, following his father’s decision to emigrate from Germany to Bradford to work in the expanding textile industry. He entered the Slade School of Art aged 16 where he was taught by Alphonse Legros, an important teacher in the British etching revival which influenced Rothenstein. The following year he attended the Académie Julian in Paris, where he met and was encouraged by the likes of James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Oscar Wilde, Walter Sickert, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Roger Fry.

On his return to England, Rothenstein had acquired a reputation as a talented artist. He received a commission from the publisher John Lane to produce a volume of lithographic portraits of Oxford personalities, Oxford Characters, to coincide with Max Beerbohm's Caricatures of Twenty-Five Gentlemen both of which were published in 1896. The success of his witty Oxford Characters lead to further volumes, the most notable of which is English Portraits 1898. This volume included portraits of George Gissing, Robert Bridges, A. W. Pinero, Cunninghame Graham, Grant Allen, William Archer, Henry James and Thomas Hardy.

The present portrait of Thomas Hardy was executed two years after the publication of his English Portraits, in which the previously mentioned portrait of Hardy was published. The present work is an excellent example of Rothenstein’s handling of pastels.

The pair must have struck a cordial relationship, as Rothenstein executed multiple portraits of Hardy during his later life, including a satirical self-portrait drawing of the artist and author titled Homage to Thomas Hardy. Both artist and sitter were strong advocates in their respective disciplines for social reform and equality. Whilst Rothenstein strove for the democratisation of art, Hardy viewed himself as a Victorian realist in his criticism of institutional beliefs and consciousness of class divisions. Hardy, having lost his faith early in life, turned to figures such as Charles Darwin to grabble with the notion of humankind’s place in the world. His novels and poems often allude to Christianity as outdated or superfluous and many explore what he deemed to be the damaging effects of traditional Christian morals.

Both men also shared experiences in their pioneering efforts in presenting the World Wars, and their distaste for the descriptive nature of war, in their respective disciplines. In 1917, Rothenstein was appointed Official War Artist and became known for his barren landscapes of the destruction at Flanders, featuring smouldering tree stumps and smoky horizons. From this position Rothenstein strongly and successfully urged the appointment of Paul Nash to the war artist scheme, who later became one of the most important and highly regarded war artists of all time. Similarly, Hardy used his literary skills to allude to the destruction caused by war, writing a number of significant and highly unique war poems.

Recently re-framed, this work now displays the artist’s first initial and date ‘R. 1900’.