"When Nature Painted all Things Gay." Alfred Parsons (1847-1920). Exhibited 1887. Oil on canvas. H 105.4 x W 151.1 cm. Collection: Tate Gallery. Accession number N01589. Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1887. Kindly made available by the gallery on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND). Image and caption material downloaded, and commentary below added, by Jacqueline Banerjee.
Well known for his garden and flower illustrations, Parsons took as his theme here an old Gloucestershire song entitled "Jenny Had Vowed away to Run with Jockie to the Fair," which starts:
'Twas on the morn of sweet May-day,
When nature painted all things gay,
Taught birds to sing, and lambs to play,
And gild the meadows fair;
Young Jockie, early in the dawn,
Arose and tript it o'er the lawn;
His Sunday's coat the youth put on,
(Refrain: For Jenny had vowed away to run
With Jockie to the fair. [The Universal Songster, p. 246]
That Parsons chose the flowering cherry for his typical May-day scene may also have something to do with his interest in Japan, which he visited a few years later, in 1892-94. Several of his illustrations for Notes in Japan (1896) depict cherry trees. This is worth remembering because Parsons is generally felt to be quintessentially English in his taste for gardens, flowers etc.
Link to related material
Bibliography
Borenius, T., and A. Helmreich. "Parsons, Alfred William (1847–1920), landscape painter, illustrator, and garden designer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Web. 1 August 2022.
Parsons, Alfred. Notes in Japan. Project Gutenberg. Web. 1 August 2022.
The Universal Songster, or Museum of Mirth. Vol. III. London: Jones & Co., 1828. Google Books. Free Ebook. Web. 1 August 2022.
"When Nature Painted all Things Gay." Art UK.Web. 1 August 2022.
Created 1 August 2022