Haytime [The Hay Field], by Thomas Armstrong. 1869. Oil on canvas; 443/4 x 617/8 inches (113.7 x 157.2 cm). Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, accession no. p.9-1917.
Armstrong's work from the 1860s onwards reflects the influences of the Aesthetic Movement. The work of Albert Moore, in particular, shaped the latter direction of his art and many of Armstrong's subjects carry a similar feeling for colour, composition, and decorative harmony.
Haytime was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869, no. 365. Armstrong has here romanticised rural life and its female agricultural workers in this decorative ensemble similar to works by artists associated with the Idyllic School, especially G. H. Mason and Fred Walker. This picture is quite obviously not a work of social realism concerned with the plight of poor farm labourers as might have been expected in Armstrong's early work. The women are displayed in a frieze-like composition, dressed in what Elizabeth Prettejohn has so aptly described as "classical-cum Regency gowns" (67), and with their hair bound in ribbons similar to that seen in classical sculpture. The colours and the mood definitely remind one of the multifigure compositions of Moore and the fabric of the dresses clearly shows Moore's influence.
Like many Aesthetic Movement paintings, this one is filled with anachronisms. The three classically inspired women stand in a garden, as daylight becomes dusk, flanked on either side by haystacks. In the background are tall trees and two buildings. One building appears to be a red brick house that stands behind a smaller white out-building. A full moon can be seen in the upper centre of the composition over top of the trees. The woman to the left wears a white dress with decorative dusky purple/pink circular motifs and holds a baby in her arms. The baby wears a white gown with a pink ribbon tied at its waist and shoes of the same shade of pink. One of the shoes has fallen off and lies on the ground by the hem of the woman's dress. The other two women stand together to the right of the composition. The one to the left stands with her back to the viewer and wears a plain white dress with a pale orange-coloured shawl, while the one to the right wears a dusky dark pink dress decorated with white flowers. Both women hold a rake in their hands. An iron gate, painted a pale blue, is situated at the far right edge of the canvas. A medieval-style bench with a green cloak draped across it is in the far right foreground. The white outbuilding has ivy cascading down from its top and a row of purple foxgloves is growing at its base.
The finished painting was widely reviewed but proved controversial when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869. E. W. Godwin, writing for The Architect, did not care for the women's costumes: "Mr. Armstrong, for instance, has made a great advance…Hay-time (No. 375) has a good figure in it: viz., the woman with the baby. The dress is exquisite – a delicate purple pattern on white. This is not the first drawing of short-waisted women we have had from this artist, and therefore it may be hoped it will be the last. The same feelings for colour and flat treatment which is evident here may produce much greater results, if combined with a costume less ungainly than that which Mr. Armstrong seem so anxious to immortalize" (289-290). The critic of The Art Journal found Armstrong's work both eccentric and fascinating: "But ere we speak of these works, let us pause for a moment before the anomalous and mediaeval creations of Mr. Donaldson and Mr. Armstrong… 'Haytime' (375), by T. Armstrong, is an eccentric product which we may by turns admire and wonder at. When and where did these long and lanky women live? why did nature make them so defiant in angularity and ugliness? The colour is chalky and washed out. Nevertheless, the picture exerts on the mind a spell; the artist manifestly is endowed with no ordinary talent"(198)
F. G. Stephens writing in The Athenaeum damned the picture with faint praise and a great deal of criticism:
Hay-time (375), by Mr. T Armstrong, is a curious, in some respects admirable, and in others disappointing picture. Its defects are obviously due to the whims, if not to the blameworthy ignorance of the artist who in some parts here has drawn like a child and painted like a girl-beginner. Yet what a fine sense of form he has by birthright is clear in the tall woman with a baby on the left; how he has been weak enough not to honour that sense in studies is even more obvious in the wonderfully incorrect figure of the woman in the centre of the picture. We cannot write "centre of the group," because the former-named figure has no relationship to the pair who with rakes in their hands stand on the right. There is a great deal of beauty in the colour of the first-named figure, gravity in its gracefulness, dignity in the face, expression in the attitude; so there is delightful colour in the figure of the girl in the purple dress; her pose is graceful as a classic study. These three damsels are in a "homefield," making hay while the moon rises at full behind dark trees which screen an old house; as the sun yet shines, this opposition of lights may afford some, but insufficient explanation for the absence of shadows in the work. But this will not account for the false colour, or no-colour, of the trees, and the lack of modelling which attends the outrageously bad drawing of the central figure, and it's awkward pose. Mr. Armstrong has a great deal to learn, most in the way of self-contempt in Art, next in the art of uniting elements of design to the making of a picture. The single figure of the baby-carrier would be perfect by itself. Why not cut the picture in half! [707]
The Illustrated London News also found Armstrong's submission eccentric: "Lastly, we must ask, in abject wonder (as we might in many other instances), by what esoteric process the large picture, called Hay Time (375), by T. Armstrong, may be considered worthy of its conspicuous place on the line? Sheer eccentricity seems to have been one of the highest recommendations to the fastidious selectors of this year. The figures in this picture are about as ungainly and ill-drawn as they could possibly be; the faded vapidity of the colouring is utterly unlike the effect of hay-time or any other time or season, or of any period of the day, twilight, or night" (527).
Sidney Colvin later had these comments praising what he considered one of Armstrong's most important early pictures, writing in 1871 in The Portfolio about a picture he found delightfully suggestive to the eye: "For some time Mr. Armstrong's Academy pictures were small in scale…then there was, two years ago, a large picture on a system of mellow lilacs and greens, the result of very great care, with tall girls in a hay-field at sunset; one girl carrying a baby that had dropped its shoe; another lolling among the haycocks; a third shouldering a rake; the walled garden of a manor-house behind them on the right, a grove of solemn trees filling in the background; the sun setting, the scene possessed by a delightful sense of summer, of evening, and of home" (67).
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Bibliography
Colvin, Sidney. "English Painters of the Present Day. XXIII – Thomas Armstrong."The Portfolio (1871): 65-67.
Godwin, Edward W. "The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Architect I (June 5, 1869): 289-290.
"Fine Arts. The Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News LIV (May 22, 1869): 526-27.
Prettejohn, Elizabeth. "Aestheticism in Painting." Eds. Calloway, Stephen and Lynn Federle Orr. The Cult of Beauty. The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900. London: V&A Publishing, 2011, 64-79.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal, New series VIII (July 1, 1869: 197-204.
Stephens, Frederic George: "Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 2169 (May 22, 1869): 706-07.
Created 19 March 2023