Arthur Melville

Audrey and her Goats

1883–9

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On loan

Gallery Oldham (Oldham, UK): Stott Tour

Artist: Arthur Melville 1855–1904
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 2045 x 2134 mm
frame: 2105 x 2201 x 120 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1925
Reference: N04043

Catalogue entry

N04043 AUDREY AND HER GOATS 1883–9

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 80 1/2×84 (204·5×213·5).
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1925.
Coll: W. Graham Robertson by 1906.
Exh: Summer Exhibition, Grosvenor Gallery, 1890 (109); R.I., 1906 (27, repr.), Newcastle, 1906 (42, repr.), Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, 1907 (79), and Nottingham, 1907 (17).
Lit: ‘Studio Talk’ in Studio, XLII, 1908, p.143; Feddon and Long, 1924, p.48; Mackay, 1951, pp.66–8, 76–8, 119, 129.

Begun in the winter of 1883–4 and completed in 1889. Rejected by the R.A. in 1890, it was hung at the last moment, together with several other rejected works by Scottish painters, in the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition which opened the same day. The subject is taken from Shakespeare's As You Like It; Touchstone is shown in the foreground on the right.

Melville met W. Graham Robertson, the donor of his two works in the Tate Gallery, in 1897 and later lived as his neighbour at Whitley in Surrey.

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