The Maas Gallery had a version of this subject of about the same size dated ‘c 1918’ on the back, which the artist’s daughter Phyllis had given to Barry Humphries. Our current version is more impressionistic. Gotch painted many pictures of children holding lanterns through the 1920s, and one of these, a similar painting called Jewelled Twilight, exhibited at the Newlyn Gallery in 1928, was reviewed by The Cornishman: ‘Who can paint soft lantern glow so well as Mr Gotch – Surely, not many? He deals with the warm blue of a summer sky, and the lambent light of Japanese lanterns, as few others can. Last year he had a glorious little oil, with these lights as the motif, and, I believe, a deep black sky; now, in “Jewelled Twilight” (31), we have the same type of work again, more welcome than ever, because expected. “Jewelled Twilight” is a small and lovely nocturne, and warms in one’s appreciation as these red and orange lanterns warm the picture scene.’ Gotch was often concerned with themes of childhood and adolescence. The evening parade seems not quite of this world, and the faceless girls in white dresses leading seem somehow symbolic. Gotch has taken an atavistic Cornish village celebration and turned it into something magical.