The Offering (1908)

A graphite and watercolour study for the marble bas-relief sculpture, ‘An Offering’ by John Havard Thomas which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1908. An earlier version, dated 1904 and entitled ‘The Offering’ was shown at the late sculptor’s 1922 memorial exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London and was described as ‘plaster bronzed’. Thomas had departed for Italy soon after 1899 and lived in Naples and Capri, where he studied the lives of peasants, before re-settling in London in 1906. This drawing, where on the left a young boy, with a conical basket over his right arm offers a quadruple bunch of grapes with his left hand, to a young girl in a long dress, standing on the right with a hoe before her, was exhibited at the Carfax Gallery (Carfax & Co.), London in November 1909, where Robert Ross, co-founder of the Contemporary Art Society was a director. It was acquired by the art collector, patron and educator, Sir Michael Sadler (1861-1943) who gifted it to the new Contemporary Art Society in 1911. The CAS later presented it to the Tate in 1917.

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