Oh! Willo! Willo! Willo! (1902) “Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 28.9 cm” [Tate Britain, London, England] -- Maxwell Ashby Armfield (English; 1892 - 1972)

The title relates to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century song of lost love, ‘Willow Song’, by an anonymous composer and used, with alterations, by Shakespeare in Othello. Dr Warwick Edwards of Glasgow University has commented on the passage of music at the bottom as follows:

 

'The source... is probably W. Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, 1855– 9, i, 207–8 (or Woolridge's revision of this, 1893). The extract begins at the upbeat to bar 11 and the words are from the 2nd. stanza. The text has been modified. (“she” for “he”) and “improved” (e.g. “my garland must be” for “must be my garland”).

‘Chappell's source is BM Add MS 15117, f.18 (before 1616), a setting for voice and lute of the famous Willow Song beginning “The poor soul sat sighing”. He has transposed the melody, modified it, and supplied a 19th century harmonization.

 

Alexander Ballard has suggested (letter to the compiler of 10 July 1975) that the face of the young man is that of Norman Wilkinson ‘of Four Oaks’ (1882–1937), the painter and stage designer, who studied at the Birmingham College of Art from 1900–1902 where he met Maxwell Armfield, with whom he went to Paris in 1902 where they shared a studio. Armfield and Wilkinson were particularly close friends until about 1910. Armfield painted a portrait of Wilkinson in watercolours in Paris in 1904 .

 

Source: Tate

 

www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/armfield-oh-willo-willo-will...

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