Vale (Farewell)

In this ethereal composition, Vale (Farewell), two women silently part in a dense, atmospheric forest. The passion flower, enigmatically fallen to the ground, and the evocative title are poignant. This work was painted toward the end of Arthur Hacker’s long and successful career and would seem to be almost in anticipation of the First World War, with the irrevocable changes that it caused.

The son of an engraver, Arthur Hacker studied at the Royal Academy between 1876 and 1880, and at the Atelier Bonnat in Paris. He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy at the age of 20, soon attracting public notice. In the early 1880s he visited Paris, Spain, and North Africa, the latter providing the setting for his painting Pelagia and Philammon, exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1887. He became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1893 and a full member in 1910. Towards the end of his career, he turned to society portraiture, as the British public's taste for his female nudes and intense religious subjects had waned.

P.S. Read here more about the art in the wake of World War I.