Signed and dated (indistinctly) l.r.: James Tucker/?34

Tempera on panel, 46 by 35 cm (14 by 13 ¾ ins)

Tucker studied at the Royal Academy Schools where he won a travelling scholarship and worked for two years as Sir William Rothenstein’s studio assistant. He moved to be head of painting and drawing at Gloucester School of Art in 1931 and established himself as a fine exponent of 1930s pastoral, rural painting, much of it based on the landscape of his nearby Cotswolds. His masterpiece Hiking (now in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (acc.B6676)) was painted around the same date as the present work and is a near-perfect evocation of the innocence of country pursuits in the era before the outbreak of the Second World War. He was a particularly gifted painter in tempera as the present work also demonstrates.