George Spencer Watson - Mary in the gardens, Dunshay (Drat them Goats!) [1926]

In the summer of 1913, two months after the birth of their daughter, Mary, the Spencer Watsons rented a cottage at Studland, on the Isle of Purbeck, beginning an association with the area which was to last for the remainder of the painter's life. Numerous oil sketches were painted of the beach, the sand-dunes and the coastal landscape. The area became a kind of Eden; it so fascinated the painter that in 1922, he and Hilda purchased Dunshay Manor on the Isle. This ancient house was partially modernised and was, on the deaths of her parents, inherited by Mary Spencer Watson who, by that stage had gained a reputation as a sculptor. During her childhood years, Mary frequently posed for her father. In Drat them Goats! however, his work returns to a more naturalistic vein related to vivid oil sketches, in its depiction of the thirteen year old Mary running with the goats in the gardens at Dunshay.

[Christie’s Auctions - Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 111.6 cm]