“The Tea Party”

Hilda Fearon

( 1878 – 1917 )

The tea party as a subject was Hilda Fearon's own territory — she returned to it repeatedly throughout her short career, and it suited her perfectly. The cool, silvery palette she favoured, the quiet attention to light falling across white cloth and china, the way figures are absorbed in small domestic ritual without performing for the viewer — all of it finds its ideal subject here. Fearon's technique was shaped by three formative experiences: the rigour of the Slade, where precise observation was everything; a period of study in Dresden under Robert Sterl that gave her a European seriousness; and above all her years in St Ives from 1900 under Algernon Talmage, where the particular quality of Cornish light — clear, cool, never quite warm — became the basis of her mature style. She was not interested in the heightened colour of the French Impressionists. Her brushwork is controlled and purposeful, her tonal range restrained, her light specific rather than atmospheric. One critic writing in The Studio in 1914 described her manner as "a little frosty" — which missed the point. The coolness is a choice, not a limitation. It gives her interiors a quality of stillness and attention that warmer palettes cannot achieve. Born in Surrey in 1878, Fearon exhibited eighteen paintings at the Royal Academy between 1908 and 1917, including at the landmark 1910 Summer Exhibition. Her work was shown in Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, Venice and Pittsburgh. She died in June 1917, aged thirty-nine, at the height of her powers. Her version of The Tea Party was subsequently presented to the Tate by Talmage — a measure of the esteem in which her work was held by those closest to her.

Specifications

Medium	Oil on canvas
Signed	Signed & dated lower right
Size	30.00" × 25.00" (76.2cm × 63.5cm)
Framed Size	34.50" × 29.50" (87.6cm × 74.9cm)
Dated	1912
Condition	Very good condition
Provenance	Private UK collection

£23,500.00

GBP

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“The Tea Party”

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Hilda Fearon