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A painting that is usually found in Hastings Museum & Art Gallery (HMAG) is spending the summer on display at the National Gallery in London.
The Daredevils (c.1930) by Thérèse Lessore has been loaned to the National Gallery as part of their Discover Degas and Miss La La exhibition until 1 September.
The painting was bought in Harry Lucy’s Sale by the Went Tree Trust in 1983 and was donated to HMAG. It was lot number 165 and cost £800.
The National Gallery approached the museum to loan the piece as The Daredevils is emblematic of the impact of Degas’s Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando in Britain.
The painting is hanging in the closing section of the exhibition, which focuses on Miss La La’s afterlife, as it epitomises Miss La La’s resonance on subsequent generations of artists.
Alice Roberts-Pratt, Senior Curator (Collections and Engagement) at HMAG, said: “We are so excited that this stunning painting by a female artist will be hanging alongside other works of national importance at the National Gallery this summer. HMAG is very keen to share its collection with a wider audience and so loaning our objects to other museums is just one way of achieving this.”
Thérése Lessore trained at the Slade School of Fine Art and was close to British modernist circles. She was fascinated by the vernacular culture and the entertainment scene, and often depicted circus subjects. The Daredevils, which portrays three trapeze artists seen from below, presents many affinities with Degas’s painting, including its radical viewpoint ‘di sotto in su’ (seen from below). Lessore’s husband, Walter Sickert, described Degas as ‘the one great French painter, perhaps one of the greatest artists the world has ever seen’, shows how familiar Lessore was with Degas’ work.
More information about the exhibition is available on the National Gallery website. Entry to the National Gallery and the exhibition is free.
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