Still Life of a Mantelpiece and Mirror with Roses in a Jug
Sir Edmund Fairfax-Lucy, 6th Baronet (1945 - 2020)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
2014 - 2020
Materials
Measurements
635 x 760 mm
Place of origin
Charlecote Park
Order this imageCollection
Charlecote Park, Warwickshire
NT 534366
Summary
Oil on board, Still Life of a Mantelpiece and Mirror with Roses in a Jug, by Edmund Fairfax-Lucy (1945-2020), 2014-2020 (unfinished). A vase of old roses on a mantlepiece at Charlecote Park, above which hangs a large, gilded mirror.
Full description
This is one of two paintings that Edmund Fairfax-Lucy was working on in the last years of his life (see also NT 534367). It was painted in the Boudoir, a sitting room added to the house at Charlecote Park for Mary Elizabeth Lucy (1803-1890) in the 1860s (now private accommodation). The painting shows a marble mantlepiece, upon which sits a jug filled with old roses surrounded by small porcelain baskets, a vase, a candlestick and a yoghurt pot. The room is glimpsed through the reflection in the gilded mirror above, revealing a red curtained window and blue sky. Although ostensibly a still-life, the painting is really concerned with the afternoon light of early spring (i). The light has flooded into the room through its two large windows and is reflected in the mirror. Fairfax-Lucy observed, ‘The subjects are not so much form as revealed by light so much as the light itself’ (ii). The painting conveys a sense of warmth and atmospheric informality for which Fairfax-Lucy’s works were known, ‘that embracing of warmth, that transience, that pleasure in the texture of things are the fragile qualities he brought to his art’ (iii). Although Fairfax-Lucy rarely depicted people, his paintings were imbued with a sense of life, activity and the ‘pulse of time’ (iv). Alan Dodd noted that Fairfax-Lucy was concerned with country house interiors and ‘that most of his subject matter was inherently aesthetic to begin with’; yet he nonetheless ‘was able to bring the same dispassionate view to painting a tube of Polo mints as to a table-scrape groaning with silver gilt’ (v). Charlecote Park, Fairfax-Lucy’s ancestral home, provided a source of inspiration throughout his career. His subjects included views from the terrace by the house to the River Avon, as well as the richly decorated interiors within the house. Much of his artistic work was undertaken at Charlecote, where other creative outputs also included his contribution to garden design (vi). Fairfax-Lucy worked on this painting over the course of seven years, abandoning it each year for other paintings once the season had moved on and the light had changed (vii). It remained unfinished at the time of his death. (i) Erica Fairfax-Lucy, pers. comms., 06.12.22. (ii) Edmund Fairfax-Lucy, quoted by Nicholas Watkins, The Art Workers Guild, The End of Lunch (The Art Workers Guild, London, 2021) (iii) Nicholas Watkins, ibid, p. 19; Richard Sorrell, ibid., p. 23. (iv) Paul Hills, ibid., p. 5-6; Sorrell, ibid., p. 23. (v) Alan Dodd, ibid., p. 17 (vi) Sian Evans, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire (National Trust, Swindon, 2017) p. 17. (vii) Erica Fairfax-Lucy, pers. comms., 06.12.22
Provenance
The painting was commissioned by the National Trust from Sir Edmund John William Hugh Fairfax-Lucy (1945-2020) for the Drawing Room at Charlecote Park. It was purchased from his widow, Lady Erica Everlina Penelope Fairfax-Lucy, by the National Trust in 2022.
Makers and roles
Sir Edmund Fairfax-Lucy, 6th Baronet (1945 - 2020) , artist