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Commentary by Dennis T. Lanigan

Stylistically this is obviously an early work by Webb(e). The picture is entitled Twilight but no work of that title was ever exhibited at any of the principal London venues. Its handling, however, reflects that of another painting After Sunset [Staley, fig.44a], done at about the same time, that Webb(e) exhibited at the Society of British Artists in 1856, no. 406, one of three paintings he showed there that year. A critic for The Spectator commented favourably on these three works: "Mr. Webbe has three of his nice little pieces, treated with the 'still-life' feeling which distinguishes him, — all of his best quality; although his green for vegetation is as unrefinedly yellow as Mr. Gosling 's is inaccurately blue. The downy timid leveret in After Sunset, and the plantation of young firs in A Cottage Garden, are both touched with great sweetness" (347).

Twilight, as the name suggests, shows a time in the early evening with a sliver of the moon visible in the sky and bats flying around. Like much of Webb(e)'s early work it features animals and birds as well as a detailed landscape portrayal of foliage and rocks. An owl perches on a rock looking down at two rabbits crouching down at the lower left. However whether one of these rabbits is young enough to be considered a "leveret," as in After Sunset, is questionable.

This work quite obviously shows the influence of the first phase of Pre-Raphaelitism which appears to have had an impact on Webb(e)'s work from the time he returned to England from Dusseldorf in 1853. It is unknown how much contact, if any, Webb had with members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but Holman Hunt appears to have been the artist who influenced him the most. Percy Bate in his landmark publication The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters illustrated a work by Webb(e) painted under Hunt's influence entitled Lambs at Play and observed that it "might almost be taken for the work of the artist of The Strayed Sheep himself" (81). Certainly the best of Webb's later orientalist paintings, with their meticulous detail and high colour, as well as their frequent religious and allegorical themes, show the influence of Hunt. Although Webb(e) is not mentioned in Hunt's book Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt illustrates a drawing of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on page 420 and identifies the artist as Webb(e). This suggests that the two may have been in contact at some point. At the very least Webb(e) would have been familiar with works by members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle by seeing the works that they exhibited at the Royal Academy.

Bibliography

Bate, Percy. The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters. Their Associates and Successors. London: George Bell & Sons Ltd., 1910.

"Fine Arts. The Society of British Artists." The SpectatorXXIX (29 March 1856): 347.

Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Vol. I. London: MacMillan, 1905.

Staley, Allen. The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

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Created 13 December 2021

Last modified 31 May 2025