Painter and Poet - Fred Hall

FREDERICK HALL (BRITISH, 1860-1948) The Goose signed and dated 'FRED HALL 1887' (lower right); Signed and inscribed on the artist's label attached to the frame, oil on canvas, 130 x92cm London, Royal Academy, 1888, no. 624; £4000-6000

The Goose was painted in 1887 and exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. The composition is based on the poem of the same name by Alfred Lord Tennyson which explores the myth of the goose that lays a golden egg. Written in 1842 against a backdrop of political unrest following the Reform Bill, Tennyson’s treatment is allegorical, exploring the long-term cost and consequence of unsustainable short-term gain. Hall painted two large oils, both exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888, based on particular verses in the poem; no. 619 based on verse four and the present work, no. 624, based on verse seven.

It clutter’d here, it chuckled there;

It stirr’d the old wife’s mettle:

She shifted in her elbow-chair,

And hurl’d the pan and kettle.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Goose, 1842, verse 7

_{Frederick Hall, The Goose (detail)}

The fictional scenario is given weight by Hall’s consummate mastery of texture, with the recently thrown brass kettle, the alluring sheen of the golden egg and the exquisite detail of the goose down all beautifully rendered in Hall’s signature, naturalistic style. Pictorial representations of well-known narratives were popular with the late Victorians, something Hall explored further with his portrayal of Cinderella in 1891.

Both Hall’s RA exhibits of The Goose were well received and critically acclaimed; described in The Ipswich Journal as ‘clever and powerful’ and The Graphic as ‘Broadly comic and eccentric in composition’. It appears they both found buyers very quickly with fellow Newlyn School grandee, Stanhope Forbes, recording that year ‘…Fred Hall is back, his purse full of money. He has been very fortunate lately’, money thought to have been gained by the sale of the present work and its companion.