Playtime by Herbert Arnould Olivier

Playtime by Herbert Arnould Olivier

A kitchen, an old woman, a child

The room is old and plain: rough plastered walls, a low vault, a floor of worn stone flags. On the right is a raised stone hearth, its front opened into an arch where earthenware jars and wicker baskets are stored. A small fire burns on top under a metal kettle, and above it a wide chimney hood carries a beam hung with pans. A shelf on the back wall holds coffee pots, jugs and a bottle; a bowl of greens sits on the counter beneath it.

An old woman in a headscarf, shawl and long blue apron leans back against the hearth and looks down. At her side a small child in a blue smock stands close and holds something up to her in one raised hand. That exchange is the whole event of the picture. The title suggests the rest: the work of the kitchen has paused for a moment of play.

On the left, the shutters of a deep window stand open, painted red, with a small print or card pinned to one of them. Through the window are tall palm trees and hazy hills in warm light. Below the sill a broom leans against the wall beside a wooden tub, and at the far left a table carries two metal pails, with brushwood heaped underneath. The palms outside suggest a southern setting, but no source names the place.

The watercolour

Playtime is a watercolour, 33.5 by 43.5 centimetres, signed with the artist's name at lower right. The one record of it we have found is an auction listing. It was offered as lot 3 by Dawsons Auctioneers of Maidenhead on 30 January 2025, estimated at £200–300, and did not sell. The catalogue gives its provenance as the Bishop of Truro, according to a label from Whittington Fine Art of Amersham on the backboard; then with Whittington Fine Art; then a private collection in the United Kingdom. No date is recorded for the picture, and the catalogue does not name which Bishop of Truro owned it.

Olivier's warm browns and the light falling across the floor from the open window give the interior its depth. The figures are small in the frame, and much of the sheet is given to the room itself: the pots, the hearth, the tools of daily work.

The painter

Herbert Arnould Olivier (1861–1952) was born in Battle, East Sussex, where his father, Henry Arnould Olivier, was a clergyman. He was educated at Sherborne School from 1875 to 1877 and entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1881, winning the Creswick Prize in 1882. He was an uncle of the actor Laurence Olivier, whose father, Gerard, was Herbert's brother.

Olivier exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1883, and also at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and the Paris Salon. In the 1880s he taught at the Bombay School of Art, and in 1884 he travelled to Kashmir with the Duke and Duchess of Connaught; sixty-six paintings from that journey were shown at the Fine Art Society in 1885. He was appointed an official war artist in 1917, and in 1924 presented to the nation a group of paintings that included The Supreme War Council, The Armistice Meeting and The Peace Signature Table; they are now in the collections of the Imperial War Museum. He was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1929, which held a retrospective of his work in 1935. He died on Hayling Island, Hampshire.

Sources: Invaluable, Dawsons Auctioneers lot 3, 30 January 2025: Herbert Arnould Olivier, Playtime · Wikipedia, Herbert Arnould Olivier