Herbert Arnould Olivier (1861-1952)

Herbert Olivier was a widely travelled and a highly versatile portrait, allegorical and landscape painter and was later appointed an official war artist. Many of his exhibited pictures were portraits of the great and the good of late Victorian and Edwardian Society, including King George V and King Edward VIII when Prince of Wales, and are now in museums and private collections. The following 39 lots are the largest group of his work ever to appear at auction and have come to us by direct descent through the artist’s family. His career spanned the turning point of High Victorian Art and the emergence of Impressionism. 

The works in this sale reflect these changes and include several major allegorical pictures and many plein air oil sketches of gardens and landscapes in England and Italy. Until recently they all hung in the artist’s former studio house in Airlie Gardens, Holland Park, an area which gave its name to the Holland Park Circle of artists popularised by Frederic, Lord Leighton from the 1860’s onwards.

Early Life and Career

Herbert Olivier was born in Battle, West Sussex into a prosperous late Victorian family and was the son of a clergyman. He had seven siblings including Henry who became a colonel, Sydney who was Secretary of State for India and Gerard, a clergyman and father of the actor Sir Laurence Olivier. He was educated at Sherborne and in 1922 presented his painting Easter Morn to the school chapel. From 1881 he studied at the Royal Academy Schools (see Lots 105-108) where he won the Creswick Prize for landscape painting and went on to exhibit there every year until 1944. He taught at the Bombay School of Art and travelled to Kashmir with H.R.H. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught. Sixty-six of the pictures he painted on this trip were exhibited at The Fine Art Society in 1885. 

In 1908 he held a one man show of 187 pictures at the Grafton Gallery entitled Indian Princes, Kew Gardens, Italian Landscapes and other pictures. In the same year many of the pictures of Kew were published in a book on the gardens. Many of these delightful works feature a bonneted lady, who although the face is obscured, is most certainly his wife.

An Official War Artist

With the onset of the First World War he painted two large scale group portraits, George V at The Frontier Post Near Dunkirk and Merville, December 1st 1914 (see Lot 112 for photogravures of these works). In 1917 he was appointed an official War Artist, and many of his pictures can be seen in the Imperial War Museum and The Government Art Collection including The Supreme War Council (the original of which was given to the French Government and displayed in the Palace of Versailles), The Armistice Meeting, The Military Representatives in Conference, The Peace Signature Table. The individual portraits he produced of these sitters have hung in the British Embassy in Paris for many years.

La Mortola, Asolo and the Starks

In contrast to his portraits and grand allegorical pictures are his plein air landscapes many of which are of his family estate at La Mortola on the Italian Riviera, next to the celebrated botanical gardens of the same name. In 1903 Herbert Olivier honeymooned with his bride Margaret Peat in the villa of their close friends Flora and Robert Stark in Asolo in Northern Italy. They introduced the young couple to the Italian Riviera and persuaded them to buy land at La Mortola. Olivier was an amateur architect and designed several villas on the estate and his pictures are bucolic visions of lush Mediterranean planting and classical statuary. The Oliviers remained lifelong friends with the Stark's daughter, the explorer and travel writer, Freya Stark (1893-1993). He painted her villa and garden in Asolo many times (see Lots 126-134) and his portrait of her is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. 

War Groups, Portraits and other Paintings

In 1935 the Royal Institute Galleries held a major retrospective exhibition of his work entitled War Groups, Portraits and other Paintings and he hoped this exhibition would show ‘that I have had the privilege of wandering in many fields both inanimate and animate, and have had serious joy in variety rather than seeing that commercial success which is the reward of the repetition of one thing’. He died in 1952 and his fellow artist, Frank O. Salisbury, writing in The Times, said of him, ‘Today there is a danger of an artist being wrapped up in his work, but broadminded, gallant Olivier looked for and encouraged the best, especially in the work of the young, rising artist starting out on an adventurous career.’

Highlights from the Collection

The Garlands of Love

"The landscape of Liguria forms the backdrop of the picture and the artist’s family and friends were stand-in models, including his daughter who is seated in the foreground... the local village postman, with his arm around his girlfriend, are seen standing on the left."

A particular highlight from the collection is Lot 142, a large allegorical work titled The Garlands of Love. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1918 and bears a plaque on the frame that reads “Medaille Antérieurement,” indicating that the Olivier had previously been awarded medals at the Salon des Artistes Français, Paris.

The Garlands of Love hung in pride of place in the Olivier’s drawing room at Airlie Gardens for over a century. It was most probably painted in this room or possibly his studio at 23 Marlborough Road, NW8, which was the address given when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy. It was flanked by plein air oil sketches of the families’ beloved gardens at La Mortola on the Ligurian coast. The landscape of Liguria forms the backdrop of the picture and the artist’s family and friends were stand-in models, including his daughter who is seated in the foreground with flowing brown hair and in a pink dress. The local village postman, with his arm around his girlfriend, are seen standing on the left. The figure on the right is seen playing a zampogna, an Italian bagpipe most associated with Christmas celebrations.

It’s monumental scale echoes that of Olivier’s early war pictures of George V at The Frontier Post Near Dunkirk: and Merville, December 1st, 1914 (Government Art Collection), but in conception, palette and sentiment it couldn’t be more different. The cold northern light gives way to the heat of the Mediterranean and the red, pink and white roses hang in swags across the composition. The matter-of-fact reportage of war is replaced by a joyous celebration. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the summer of 1918 several months before the Armistice where it hung alongside portraits of fallen soldiers and depictions of heroism and military offensives. Olivier included a verse of his own creation as a subtitle for the picture reassuring us that love will protect us from pain.

Olivier’s artist friend and neighbour Henry Herbert La Thangue regularly exhibited pictures set on the Ligurian coast at this period, but whereas these were firmly painted within the parameters of Realism, Garlands of Love has an entirely different aesthetic and reflects the romantic and classical traditions of High Victorian art. Its gilded Tabernacle frame is similar to those favoured by his one-time mentor Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema whose Roses of Heliogabalus is an obvious comparison to this work. Flowers are a leitmotiv that re-occur in many of his pictures including his 1902 Royal Academy exhibit Summer is Icumen, which to date is his most significant work to come to auction when it sold for £331,250 in 2009.

Venus and Adonis

"The model for Adonis was the artist’s brother Gerard Olivier (1869-1939), the father of actor Sir Laurence Olivier."

Another work to note is Lot 143, an oil on canvas titled Venus and Adonis, or alternatively titled on a second label Love and Energy symbolised by Venus and Adonis. The painting presents Olivier’s interpretation of the last meeting of the goddess Venus and her mortal lover Adonis from Book X of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Cupid accidentally wounded his mother Venus with an arrow and caused her to fall in love with Adonis. Venus implores Adonis not to join the hunt for fear he will meet his death; the hunter is determined, however, and pulls away from her while holding the leads of his hounds. In Ovid’s text, Venus takes off from this final meeting in her swan-driven chariot, but turns back upon hearing Adonis’s death moans as her beloved was fatally wounded by a boar during the hunt.

The model for Adonis was the artist’s brother Gerard Olivier (1869-1939), the father of actor Sir Laurence Olivier. The setting for this mythological scene is the garden of La Mortola on the Italian Riviera, which Olivier painted on many occasions and is depicted in several other works in this collection.

Death and the Maiden

Finally, we take a look at Lot 145, titled Death and the Maiden. The subject dates back over six hundred years and has its origins in the Greek myth of the abduction of Persephone (Proserpine among the Romans) by Hades. Most versions depict death as a skeleton, such as John Byam Shaw’s drawing of 1895 which was illustrated in The Studio in 1897, the year Olivier exhibited his picture at Liverpool. In this instance Death is depicted as a handsome cloaked youth in an autumnal wood, re-iterating Hades infatuation with Persephone and her impending return to the underworld. She is seen gathering pomegranates, a symbol of purity and a reference to Edward Burne-Jones Proserpine.

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Auction Details

Thursday 2 March | 10.30am GMT
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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VIEWING:

• Viewing in London (highlights only):
  • Monday 20 February: 10am-4pm
  • Tuesday 21 February: 10am-4pm
  • Wednesday 22 February: 10am-4pm
• Viewing in Newbury (full sale):
  • Sunday 26 February: 10am-3pm
  • Monday 27 February: 10am-4pm
  • Tuesday 28 February: 10am-4pm
  • Wednesday 1 March: 10am-4pm
  • Day of sale: from 8.30am
• Dreweatts 360 Virtual Auction Tour | Available from Friday 17 February

Selected other items from his home in Airlie Gardens, Holland Park, will be included in our sale of Fine Furniture, Sculpture, Carpets, Ceramics and Works of Art on the 29-30 March.