The Old Troubadour

Catalogue entry

N04704 THE OLD TROUBADOUR 1926
 
Inscr. ‘C. Klinghoffer’ b.r.
Canvas, 21×25 1/2 (53·5×65).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1933.
Exh: Women's International Art Club, February–March 1928 (141); (?) Nationale Kunsthandel, Amsterdam, April–May 1928 (10), as ‘Torquato de Troubadour’; Redfern Gallery, May–June 1929 (19); R.A., 1933 (723).
Lit: J. B. Manson, ‘Clara Klinghoffer’ in Studio, XCIV, 1927, p.413, repr. p.415 (in colour).

The artist wrote (16 February 1958): ‘My husband and I spent the summer and autumn of 1926 in Menton-Garavan, close to the Italian border. It was there, at the border, that we met old Torquato Simoncelli, singing and playing on his guitar. This gentle and lovable old man came to sit for me on the terrace of our Villa, after his day's work as a Troubadour was over (generally in the late afternoon). He sang, reminisced and played while I painted.... I did paint a second picture of him in another pose (this picture I still have).’ The second version may have been the picture exhibited in Amsterdam.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I

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