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Commentary by Dennis T. Lanigan

This watercolour was shown at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours [Old Water Colour Society] in 1886, no. 200. It is a rare instance of Marks being influenced by the Aesthetic Movement while still incorporating images of birds, in this case Grey Crowned Cranes, that he had become famous for. Marks gave it a title, however, that is more suggestive of a conventional genre painting implying that the woman in a wistful mood gazing out to sea is likely waiting for the return of her lover. Marks has possibly chosen to incorporate this species of crane into the painting for symbolic purposes, since they are known to mate for life, thereby suggesting that the young woman will remain faithful to the lover whose return she awaits. She is clad in a blue "Aesthetic" gown beloved of the women associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement rather than the more conventional Victorian dress of the period.

The model for the young woman is unknown, but Rupert Maas has noted a resemblance to Lady Elizabeth Harriet Grosvenor, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Westminster. She became the Marchioness of Ormonde on her marriage in 1876. Her husband the Marquess was Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron and it is possible that she was watching and waiting for him (as suggested on the Maas Gallery website).

In 1877 the Duke of Westminster had commissioned Marks to paint a series of twelve panels of birds for the drawing room of his country house, Eaton Hall in Cheshire. One of these panels included these same Grey Crowned Cranes [African Cranes]. A recurrent motif in the background of all twelve paintings was a low wall, four courses of stone high, as in this watercolour, Maas therefore feels it is likely that this watercolour was in some way connected to that project.

When it was shown at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours a critic for the Hampstead & Highgate Express commented: "Waiting and Watching, a lady looking seawards, and attended by some tall members of the feathered tribe, noticeable for their noble crests, are most cleverly drawn" (3). F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum felt the birds were the most important part of the composition: "Watching and Waiting (200), a lady in a blue dress looking over the sea from beside a low wall, is admirably solid, bright, and firm, but it is easy to see that she exists in order to accompany the tall, long-limbed, splendid-crested birds at her side. The birds are a little hard and flat, but their colours could scarcely be better, unless their plumage were fuller of light" (750).

A reviewer for The Spectator found the work painted with thoroughness and skill: "Mr. Stacy Marks has gone back to his long-legged and short-legged birds, and sends four compositions in which these are the chief features. The best of these is No. 200, a girl in a blue dress standing Waiting and Watching, with a couple of long-legged tuft-headed fowls by her side. Not a new style of subject this, for Mr. Marks has been at it, with slight variations, for a dozen years at least; but executed with all his skill and thoroughness, and of its semi-humorous kind, good" (1711).

Bibliography

"Art. Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours." The Spectator LIX (18 December 1886): 1710-11

British Pictures. London: The Maas Gallery 2013, cat. 57, 62. See: https://www.maasgallery.co.uk/artworks/9750-henry-stacey-marks-1825-1898-waiting-and-watching/

"Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours Exhibition." Hampstead & Highgate Express (11 December 1886): 3.

Stephens, Frederic George. "The Society of Painters in Water Colours: Winter Exhibition." The Athenaeum No. 3084 (4 December 1886): 749-50.

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Created 19 November 2018

Commentary added 26 October 2023