William Stott Of Oldham (British, 1857-1900) Ophelia

William Stott Of Oldham (British, 1857-1900) Ophelia signed 'WILLIAM STOTT OF OLDHAM' (lower right) oil on canvas 85 x 143cm (33 7/16 x 56 5/16in). Footnotes: Provenance The artist's son, Millie Dow Stott Esq, until 1912. Artist's studio sale, Christie's, London, November 1913. With Charles Jackson, Manchester. Private collection, UK. Exhibited London, Royal Academy, 1895, no. 679. Paris, Societe de la Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1896, no. 1179. Berlin, VII Internationale Kunstausstellung 1897. no. 3533. Manchester, City of Manchester Art Gallery, Exhibition of works by James Charles, George Sheffield, William Stott (of Oldham), D.A.Williamson , 1912, no. 339. William Stott, son of an Oldham mill owner, went to Paris in 1878, at the age of 20, to train with the classical French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. He adopted a realist style of painting and achieved rapid success, being medalled at the Paris Salon in 1882 for his painting The Bathing Place (Munich). He became a leading figure in the Anglo-American artists' community in Paris and for a while he was seen as one of the most progressive of English painters. In Paris, where he kept an apartment throughout the 1880s, he was exposed to the radical cross-currents of Impressionism and Symbolism and he made many influential friends in the artistic community. On returning to England, he became a follower and close friend of James McNeill Whistler until his painting of Whistler's mistress depicted naked as The Birth of Venus (Gallery Oldham) was exhibited at the RBA in 1887 and caused a rift between them. Stott turned his back on his realist roots and the stifling influence of Whistler and deliberately set out to find acceptance within the art establishment, and in particular the Royal Academy. At the time the Aesthetic Movement was in full swing and the Royal Academy, under the presidency of Fredrick, Lord Leighton, had become the undisputed sanctuary of the 'classical' strand of the Movement. As Christopher Wood noted '....the election of Leighton to the Academy presidency in 1878 did give impetus to the general swing towards classical subjects, both among younger artists wanting to make their name and among older artists ready to trim their sails to the new artistic breezes blowing in from Italy and Greece.' 1 In the 1890s William Stott exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, mainly highly decorative works with subjects derived from classical mythology and literature. The present lot, painted in 1894, was Stott's 1895 entry to the Royal Academy and was subsequently exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1896. Shakespeare was a favourite source for Victorian painters, and the tragic romance of Ophelia, from Hamlet, was an especially popular subject, featuring regularly in the Royal Academy exhibitions. The most popular and iconic image of Ophelia's death was, and is to this day, John Everett Millais's 1851 painting showing the confused and tragic Ophelia floating downstream on her back in a state of mad ecstasy, arms raised in a gesture of inevitable submission. However, although Stott chose not to pastiche this image, it seems highly likely that he was prompted to take up this subject, which had almost become a 'rite of passage' among Victorian painters, by the fact that in 1894 Millais's Ophelia was presented to the National Gallery of British Art by Sir Henry Tate. It appears that Stott was much influenced by John William Waterhouse's version of the event, painted in 1889. Here, Ophelia is lying in a field of wildflowers her right arm outstretched along the ground, her left arm raised above her head. The top of her torso is twisted towards the viewer, whom she looks at with a confused stare. The similarities in the pose between Stott's portrayal and Waterhouse's 1889 version are striking, but in Stott's picture Ophelia is lying on her side on the bank of the stream and her fingertips are immersed in the water. Where Stott references back to Millais' iconic 1851 representation of the tragedy is in his meticulous and painstaking execution of the surrounding foliage and flora. Stott had never really lost the respect for form and finish instilled into him by his teacher Gérôme in Paris and in his later years, in his search for absolute beauty in the natural world, he shows an affinity with the ideals of John Ruskin, the champion of the Pre-Raphaelites. In Modern Painters Ruskin wrote, 'Go to nature in all singleness of heart...rejoicing always in the truth'. This is a credo that William Stott would have been very comfortable with in the last decade of his short life. Stott died in 1900 at the age of 42 while on a sea-crossing to Ireland. And so, his full potential as an artist was never realised. 1 C. Wood, Victorian Painting , London, 1999, p.222. We are grateful to Roger Brown BA., MA. for compiling this catalogue entry. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com