Leila K. Williamson
(English, active 1884 — 1919)

Gypsy Caravans in the Snow
signed in the lower left Leila K. Williamson

oil on canvas

28"×38" (70.6 cm×96.5 cm)

PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, New York, circa 1950’s and thus by descent in the family until the present time.

This painting shows gypsy caravans under the protection of the trees at the side of a wood in snow. The figures in the foreground trudging through the snow towards their home takes us into the picture and into the world of the gypsies, who have fascinated painters since they appeared in the landscape genres of Thomas Gainsborough (1727 — 1788) in the second half of the eighteenth century. Romany Gypsies who still travel around Great Britain and Ireland are the descendants of eastern European immigrants from at least as early as the seventeenth century, and along with Irish travelers maintain a largely nomadic lifestyle into the modern age. To artists they were an emblem of freedom and magic in a conforming and unromantic world, as well as superb pictorial subject, for their colorful dress and caravans. Until just after the Second World War they traveled and lived in colorfully painted wooden caravans as shown here, with typical curved ’beehive’ shape. In the nineteenth century they appeared as colorful extras in paintings such as William Powell Frith’s Derby Day (Tate Gallery) but they became a subject in their own right in the paintings of Augustus John and most famously Sir Alfred Munnings, who chronicled their unique lifestyle more fully than any other artist.

In this painting they might merely be a picturesque background element, but a closer study of Williamson’s career shows a profound fascination with nomads and tribesmen, and she clearly responded to their proud independence. Stylistically this work may antedate Williamson’s travels in India circa 1912, where she produced magnificent works such as Pilgrims at Pahlagm (watercolor, location unknown) but the degree of respect and understanding that she accords to the Kashmiri tribesmen in the former work suggests that she sees gypsies back home in Britain as more than colorful rural extras, and raises the present oil painting to the level of social and anthropological commentary as well as harmonious and atmospheric landscape. Williamson had exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1894 (no. 1202); a single work entitled Polly, A Portrait when her address was given as 78 West Cromwell Road, London. In 1912 she exhibited (no. 44) Entrance to Hindu Shrine, Srinagar, Kashmir, which sold for eight pounds. Her address was then given as St. George’s Hotel, West Bolton Gardens, London. In the following year she exhibited Miriam, My African Ayah (no. 928) at the Society of Women Artists. Other recorded Kashmiri subjects include Entrance to Mamasbal Lake (location unknown).

Although more routine subjects are recorded, Williamson’s great interest appears to have been the untamed and the exotic. The fact that one of her portrait subjects was her African Ayah or nurse reveals that she was perhaps raised in Africa or India, and suggests that the roots of her fascination were laid very deep. The Kashmir was not an area to be lightly traveled at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially for a woman.

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