Image: Henry Herbert La Thangue, A Sussex Cider Press (1898).

After taking Labor Day weekend off we return with our art post with one that focuses on manual labor of the season.

Henry Herbert La Thangue was born outside of London in 1859. He studied at the Royal Academy and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. As a young man he described the Academy as “the diseased root from which other evils grow.” He was a founder of the New English Art Club that advocated the ideals of French plein-air painting. Like many a young man, his harsh words would later soften, as would the position of the Academy.

The picture above was painted in 1898, the year he was accepted into the Academy. “[Sargent and La Thangue’s] careers had not been dependant upon the favours of academicians, and to some extent, they were accepted with reluctance. This was to become a chorus in 1898, and in other reviews there was a call for genuine works of art, like those of La Thangue and his contemporaries, to be separated from the general mêlée of popular potboilers involving babies, cavaliers and old soldiers.” This work was one highlighted that year for praise. One publication writing, “only in A Sussex Cider Press do we find him quite at his best. There is here much of the sentiment of Millet, but all the silveriness is lost in a brownish atmosphere composed of a cloud of carefully-marshalled but perfectly visible touches. Such is the impression which the beholder carries away.” The painting appears to be in private hands.

1898 would also mark the year he started to travel extensively to Provence and Italy to paint. He returned to England at the end of the 1920s, making Sussex his home but dying in London at 20 Wimpole Street, Marylebone, on 21 December 1929.

###

Thanks for reading. If you want to stay up to date on these amazingly insightful post of obscure works about food an its sources, then you are in that small group that should definitely be following us. We are on FB, Insta, and Twitter.  Click on the icons at the top or bottom of this page to stay up to date.

We should warn you, however, that our primary purpose on this site is a dining guide for D.C. So, if you happen to be in the area and looking for a great place to eat, check out the rest of the site. We have 300+ recommended restaurants. You can sort by cuisine, neighborhood, and current operating status (dine-in and/or take-out, etc. – though things are in flux and we may miss something, so check before you go!) in either LIST or MAP format.