£5,250
Five Centuries: Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art from 1600 | 580
Auction: 20 November 2019 at 10:00 GMT
Watercolour
Provenance: The artist's family and thence by descent
Exhibited: V Exposicion International de Arte, Barcelona 1907, where Isabel, under her maiden name Konody, won a silver medal
Note: The medal and certificate awarded to Isabel are included in this lot.
Codrington’s subject in this early watercolour is derived from Norse mythology and refers to Iduna, the young woman who picks the golden apples on which the gods depend for their strength. According to legend she was kidnapped by Thiassi, the King of the Giants disguised as an eagle, in the first of many adventures. These tales may well have been remembered from Codrington’s childhood since, according to an interview, the Pyke-Nott siblings, growing up in Devon, ‘revelled in their country life, and the stories of fairies, elves and smugglers …’ (Western Morning News, 21 November 1935, p. 3).
In stylistic terms, with its references to Edward Burne-Jones and John William Waterhouse, the work is decidedly of the Celtic Revival period, and is likely to have been painted some years before the Barcelona exhibition at which it was awarded a silver medal. It chimes with that of some of Codrington’s Royal Academy Schools contemporaries – Edwardian Pre-Raphaelites such as Frank Cadogan Cowper, Charles Sims and John and Mary Young Hunter who also appealed to myths and fairy tales from northern Europe and Scandinavia.