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Lot Essay
This dramatic and exciting composition is an exploration of tonal harmonies as well as an exploration in the medium of pastel. Melville's interest in planes of light and colour was hugely innovative for the time. His brilliance lay in his ability to disguise the highly technical and deliberate application of the pastel in the broad and fevered strokes that give After the play its impact. As Iain Gale describes it, op.cit., p. 60: 'The bold expanse of the bright yellow dress of the woman being helped into her cape dominates the picture and yet again it is not the action of the narrative which concerns the artist or to which our attention is drawn, but this area of pure colour'.
Melville rarely worked in pastel, being best known as one of the greatest watercolourists of his age, and the present drawing is one of the most ambitious schemes he attempted in the medium. It was executed for the second exhibition held by the Pastel Society, of which Melville was an original committee member.
This highly aesthetic work shows the influence of artists such as James Abbott McNeil Whistler (1834-1903), as well as the social realism of contemporary French painters. Melville was a member of the so-called 'Glasgow Boys', a group of young artists who gained recognition by challenging the classical and allegorical subject matter of the established art world as represented by the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. They flourished throughout the 1880s and 1890s and, as well as painting in Glasgow and its environs, they sought scenes of rural life in other parts of Scotland. Principal members of the group included Joseph Crawhall (1861-1913), George Henry (1858-1943) and Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933).
Melville's oeuvre is characterised by a fascination with light and colour and the present work dates from a period when 'his colour has become more transparent, his tone more dazzlingly clear, his whites more resonant'.
Melville rarely worked in pastel, being best known as one of the greatest watercolourists of his age, and the present drawing is one of the most ambitious schemes he attempted in the medium. It was executed for the second exhibition held by the Pastel Society, of which Melville was an original committee member.
This highly aesthetic work shows the influence of artists such as James Abbott McNeil Whistler (1834-1903), as well as the social realism of contemporary French painters. Melville was a member of the so-called 'Glasgow Boys', a group of young artists who gained recognition by challenging the classical and allegorical subject matter of the established art world as represented by the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. They flourished throughout the 1880s and 1890s and, as well as painting in Glasgow and its environs, they sought scenes of rural life in other parts of Scotland. Principal members of the group included Joseph Crawhall (1861-1913), George Henry (1858-1943) and Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933).
Melville's oeuvre is characterised by a fascination with light and colour and the present work dates from a period when 'his colour has become more transparent, his tone more dazzlingly clear, his whites more resonant'.