Edward Penny (Knutsford 1714-1791 Chiswick)
'Lavinia, Daughter of the Once Rich Acasto, Discovered Gleaning' from Thomson's Seasons
oil on canvas
126.5 x 100.2cm (49 13/16 x 39 7/16in).
Footnotes:
Provenance
With Thomas Agnews, London, 1944 (according to a Witt Library mount)
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 15 May 1946, lot 59 (bt. Wilton)
Private Collection, UK for at least 50 years

Exhibited
London, Royal Academy, 1781, cat. no. 101

Literature
L.A. Lax, The 'Ingenious Moral Painter': Edward Penny, The Royal Academy and the Reinvention of Genre Painting 1768-1782, PhD thesis, 2013, vol. I, pp.178, 203-226, 230, vol. II, ill., p. 357, fig. 104

The subject of the present work is taken from James Thomson's popular, pastoral poems The Seasons, published in 1726-30. It depicts a scene from the poem's final section, 'Autumn' in which we see the first encounter between Palemon, an affluent young landowner, and Lavinia, an impoverished high-born lady reduced to gleaning the fields to support her family. Palemon is struck by Lavinia's beauty and recognises her as the daughter of his late patron, Acasto, whose death caused Lavinia's mother's descent into poverty, and later asks for her hand in marriage. Thomson's story of this rural romance, derived from the biblical story of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 1-4), was hugely influential, inspiring paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and J.M.W Turner amongst many other artists.