AT THE CLOSE OF A JOYFUL DAY HANGING IN BANGALORE AND A MYSTERY
UNTIL RECENTLY, PHOTOGRAPHY was not permitted in the Bangalore branch of the NGMA (National Gallery of Modern Art). On a recent visit in January 2024, we discovered that photography was now permissible.
I have been visiting the NGMA regularly since it first opened a few years ago (2009). Each time I have been, with one exception, I have noticed a painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912). It depicts a lady leaning over a parapet beside a lake with mountains in the distance. It bears the title “At the Close of a Joyful Day”. It is currently hanging on a wall beside several portrait paintings by a Parsi artist named Pithawala. I have always wondered how this painting by Alma-Tadema has ended up as part of the collection of India’s NGMA.
According to an article published in “American Art News” (New York, 25th of April 1908), the painting had been the part of the “Coghill collection” and had sold at London’s Christie’s auction house for £966. The purchaser was not mentioned. I have not yet discovered anything relevant about the above-mentioned collection.
In connection with the sale of a painting by Alma-Tadema in 2019, the Sotheby’s auction house website mentions a letter that Alma-Tadema wrote in 1894 to the German egyptologist George Ebers. Here is an interesting excerpt from the website:
“… Alma-Tadema commented of one of his compositions, “It is a single figure girl, which has ascended to the highest point of a building to see far away out of the picture over some sort of Starnberger See, a second use of the study I painted when with you mingled with recollections… so you see my mind is still often with the dear friend at Tutzing” (letter from Alma-Tadema to Ebers, December 29, 1893, as quoted in Swanson, p. 77). While he is referring to ‘At the close of a joyful day’ (1894 …), the artist could just as easily be describing the mis-en-scene of the present work.” (That is the work in the auction.)
This essay, published to accompany an auction held in New York in February 2019, mentioned that “the current location [of ‘At the Close of a Joyful Day’] is unknown”.
Well, at least, I know where to find it.
What I would really like to know is how the painting reached India. Who owned it after it was sold in 1909, and how did it end up in the NGMA collection.
[The painting’s NGMA accession number is 02186]
