Listening to My Sweet Pipings

Date created: 1911

The following text comes from an auction catalogue: "This picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1911 and was bought by Major Alec P. Henderson, the second son of Alexander Henderson, Lord Faringdon, whose family were Waterhouse's chief patrons during the later part of his career.

As so often with the artist's work at this date, the picture belongs to a series in which he explored different aspects of a theme, in this case that of spring. The series extended over several years, going back to the early 1900s, including the Boreas of 1904, and reaching a climax in two pictures shown at the Royal Academy in 1913, A Song of Springtime and Narcissus, both of which joined this picture in Alex Henderson's collection. Listening to my Sweet Pipings is not entirely characteristic of the series in that the main figure is reclining, but cousins of the putto playing the pan-pipes appear in A Song of Springtime, the only two occasions on which the motif occurs in these paintings."