Monday, May 31, 2010

Robert McGregor - The Mussel Gatherers


oil on canvas
signed R McGregor l.r.
34 1/4 x 44"
c. 1895 ? (RSA)

Henry Woods - The Embroideress



signed, inscribed 'Venice' and dated 1911
canvas laid on panel
35.5 x 23.5"
exhibited RA 1911

George Bernard O'Neill - His First Model



signed
24 x 20"

probably the painting of the same name exhibited at the RA in 1883

John Callcott Horsley - Madame de Chauffe



signed and dated 1871
on panel
21 x 14.5"
exhibited RA 1871

William Powell Frith - Study of a girl with Parasol



[Study of a Girl holding a Parasol (Miss Mortimer)]
canvas laid on board, oval frame
10 x 8"
this sketch is believed to be related to 'Derby Day' (1858)

James Hayllar - The Centre of Attention



signed
19 x 29.5"

exhibited RA 1891

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Where's Mary? Hunt is on for Victorian artist's secret mistress



[The Rejected Poet - Mary Alford?]

Art historians scan vast canvases for images of painter's 'invisible woman'
Martin Wainwright The Guardian, Monday 26 March 2007
-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/mar/26/artnews.art

links to The Railway Station
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/education/publicschool2.html

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Powell_Frith_The_Railway_Station.jpg




http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?record=ART367

John Wilson Carmichael - The Inspection of the Fleet




signed and dated 1852 l.r.
oil on canvas
40 x 66 1/8"

David Wilkie - "Nelson's Ghost"


oil on panel
10 5/8 x 13"

Hendrik de Cort



[View from the North West of Castle Howard, Yorkshire, and the Mausoleum, over the Great Lime Avenue, with figures and deer in the foreground]

c. 1800
oil on panel

1742 - 1810.

http://www.artnet.com/artist/643734/hendrik-frans-de-cort.html

http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/artist47281/Hendrik-Frans-de-Cort/page-1

Charles Spencelayh - The Political Argument



signed l.l. with artist's address in Didsbury on reverse
oil on panel
10 x 12"

William McTaggert - Following the Fine Arts



signed and dated 1874
47 x 70"

painted at Carnoustie in the Spring and Summer of 1873
fisher-children following an Italian image seller. A larger and more elaborate version is also known.

exhibited RA 1874

William McTaggert - The Past and the Present



signed and dated 1860
31 x 36"

exhibited RSA 1860

originally called 'The Builders', the artist was living at Howe Street, Edinburgh.

Laslett John Pott - Fire at a Theatre




signed
25.5 x 36 1/4"
exhibited RA 1869

Harry Brooker - The Young Kite Makers


signed and dated 1897
28 x 36"

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Pandora




Watercolour and bodycolour, with scratching out
10 3/8 x 9 5/8"
Bankside Gallery

John Anster Fitzgerald - The Chase of the White Mouse




John Anster Fitzgerald is chiefly known as one of the outstanding exponents of victorian fairy painting, and is also known as ‘Fairy Fitzgerald.’ Having had no known formal artistic training, Fitzgerald was regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy by 1845, at the age of 23. Dating from the early 1860s, The Chase of the White Mouse (estimate: £180,000-250,000) is one of the artist’s most important and highly esteemed works. The star lot of the sale, this painting encapsulates all the key elements of Fitzgerald’s fairy subjects, boasting iridescent colours and superb detail. The playfulness and whimsy have been noted as being savagely undercut by touches of cruelty, characteristic of the darker undercurrent of so many fairytale stories.

George Bernard O'Neill - New Year's Day




signed and dated '89
24 x 30"

exhibited RA 1889

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_O'Neill

Marcus Stone - A Painter's First Work




signed and dated '62
27 x 36.5"
Exhibited RA 1862

http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/artist.aspx?artist=marcus-stone

Thomas Faed - The Leisham Family of Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire




39.5 x 48"


http://www.exploreart.co.uk/artistic_styles_details.asp?ArtistID=26&ArtisticStyleID=7

John Frederick Lewis - The Bezestein Bazaar of El Khan Khalil, Cairo




1872
44.5 x 33.5"
Exhibited RA 1874

There is a watercolour of the same subject in Bedford dated the same year.

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/lewis/index.html

Friday, May 28, 2010

Edward John Poynter - Abigail



signed with monogram and 1856 l.l.
watercolour heightened with bodycolour
9 3/4 x 3.5"
Painted when he was living in Paris, when he enrolled in the atelier of the history painter Gabriel Charles Gleyre.

George Edwards Hering - Venice from the Waterfront



signed and dated 1860 l.r.
oil on canvas
16 x 26 1/4"

Edward Henry Fahey




Watercolour and bodycolour, heightened with gum arabic
13 3/4 x 9 3/4"
1872

Edward Henry Fahey was born in Brompton, England. He was the son of artist James Fahey. Edward studied architecture at South Kensington and at the Royal Academy Schools. He traveled in Italy from 1866 to 1869 and upon his return re-entered the Royal Academy Schools to study painting. He exhibited works at the Royal Academy, Royal Hibernian Academy and Royal Scottish Academy. Today his paintings are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, England and in the Melbourne, Salford and Sydney Museums, Australia.

1844-1907.

http://www.artnet.com/artist/189551/edward-henry-fahey.html

Frank Moss Bennett - The Huntsman's Tale



signed and dated '38 l.r.
oil on canvas
16 x 21"

William Collins - Unloading the Catch at low tide




oil on canvas
34.5 x 48"

John Evan Hodgson - Far from Home



signed and dated 1889
oil on panel
25 x 30"

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/speel/paint/hodgson.htm

Henry Nelson O'Neil - A Volunteer




signed with monogram and dated 1860
62 x 88"
exhibited RA 1860

based on the sinking of The Royal Charter off Moelfre, Angelsey Oct 26th 1859 in which over 400 were lost, mainly travellers from Australia

Edward Robert Hughes - A Woman's head in profile



signed E R Hughes l.l.
inscribed STUDY
colourd chalks
14 x 11 3/4"

William Powell Frith - The Railway Station



larger image:
http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/frith/paintings/5.html

Following the success of his The Derby Day in 1858 Frith painted an oil sketch of the present painting which he showed to the dealer L.V. Flatow (often mistakenly spelt Flatou)who offered him £4500. This version, 28 x 60" was produced for the engraver Henry Graves & Co.(published 1886); an even larger version hangs at Holloway College,and a third version is in Leicester.

When Flatow showed the finished painting at his gallery in Haymarket in Spring 1862, 21,159 people paid for an admission in seven weeks.

Edwin Long - The Crown of the Justification






note: this doesn't otherwise seem to be on the Internet. In my auction catglg - Sotheby's April 1980 - it is so wide I couldn't scan it as one image.

Signed with monogram and dated 1888
80 x 140"

Exhibited RA 1888

The picture was meant to show the judging of an important personage before the 42 assessors (representng the cardinal sins of the Egyptian moral code) as mentioned by Diodorus Siculus.

Richard Quick, The Life and Works of Edwin Long, 1931

William Ewart Lockhart - The Cid and the five Moorish Kings



signed and dated 1881
57 x 101"

Exhibited Grosvenor Gallery 1881

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cid

Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Caracalla and Geta, Bear Fight in the Coliseum 203AD






signed and numbered CCCLXXXII
48.5 x 60.5"
the frame was designed by the artist

commissioned by Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, 1907
ntended to represent a gala performance given in the Flavian Amphitheatre by Septimus Severus on the occasion of his bestowing on Bassianus (nicknamed Caaracalla), his son by his fitst wife, the title of Antonius Caesar.
Septimus is shown in the Royal Box with his second wife, Julia Bomna. She had tried,unsuccesfully, to obtain the same honour for her son eta, who is shown at the front of the box between his two sisters. Caracalla is shown to the right of the Emperor.

The work was carefully composed and painted, Alma-Tadena counted 2500 spectators out of a total of 35,000 which he calculated the stadium could hold. It took nearly two years to paint (begun in 1905) and followed on from his The Finding of Moses (CCCLXXVII).

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Six Million Pounds of Victorian Paintings to Be Offered at Christie's




LONDON.- The vitality of the market for Victorian & British Pictures including Drawings & Watercolours continues to gain notable momentum, as demonstrated by the multiple world auction records set at the December 2009 sale where ‘spirited bidding from buyers swept up with Victorian values’ was reported in the press. The summer 2010 sale at Christie’s London, on Wednesday 16 June, will meet the renewed vigor of demand with one of the strongest sales of its type to be offered on the international auction platform for many years. With estimates ranging from £3,000 to £1.5 million, the sale is expected to realise in the region of £6 million. This auction follows the morning sale of the Nicolette Wernick Collection of British Watercolours & Paintings (1800-1950).

The star lots are led by Victorian masterpieces Under the Roof of Blue Ionian Weather by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A., R.W.S. (1836-1912) (estimate: £1,000,000 -1,500,000) and Chloe, 1893, by Sir Edward John Poynter, Bt., P.R.A., R.W.S. (1836-1919) (estimate: £600,000-800,000), both of which are offered at auction for the first time in 25 years; and The Sea Maiden by Herbert James Draper (1854-1920) (estimate: £800,000-1,200,000) which is offered by The Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro. The Museum is facing a funding shortfall and has recently decided to offer the work for sale after a comprehensive consultation process. They will use proceeds of the sale to establish an endowment fund that will safeguard its long-term future. Elsewhere, in addition to sterling examples of Sporting and Scottish art, important British Impressionist works are led by Sir George Clausen, R.A., R.W.S. (1852-1944) and Henry Herbert La Thangue, R.A. (1859-1929).

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, one of the great exponents of High Victorian classicism, is known to have worked on Under the Roof of Blue Ionian Weather (estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000) for over two years, as a commission for the financier Ernest Cassel. The title is adapted from Shelley’s ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne.’ A remarkable work, of museum quality, this painting illustrates Alma-Tadema’s sophisticated technique coupled with considerable archaeological knowledge. Bathing the viewer in glorious sunshine, the generous sweep of marble benches with reclining sitters against an azure sea and sky, imbue a sense of infinite beauty and tranquility which is irresistible. It received extensive critical acclaim when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1901, as a pendant to Poynter’s Helena and Hermia.

Chloe, 1893, by Sir Edward John Poynter (estimate: £600,000-800,000) is regarded as one of the artist’s masterpieces. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1893, three years prior to Poynter’s appointment as President of the R.A., following the deaths of Leighton and Millais in quick succession. It is an exercise in Aestheticism, whereby no particular story, point, or moral, is conveyed. Instead, this highly decorative work evokes atmosphere and depth through the rich tapestry of colours, textures and compositional balance, which is further enhanced by the graceful elegance of the sitter and the presence of music in the form of pipes, a lyre and a small bird.

Offered for sale by The Royal Institution of Cornwall Museum, Truro, The Sea Maiden by Herbert James Draper is an extraordinary painting, which was the artist’s most ambitious work to date and his first popular success when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1894 (estimate: £800,000-1,200,000). The artistic process on which Draper embarked with this work was a true journey. Having conceived the design in Rome in 1890, he planned the composition down to the very last detail and made numerous studies which are recorded photographically. The studies for the background were made in the Scilly Isles and Devon, where Draper even joined a fishing trawler at sea to directly observe the nets being hauled in; he went on to make a model of the boat to examine the way that it caught the light. An artist who was highly regarded by the established masters of the time, Draper received advice from Frederic, Lord Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, to avoid too much realism and instead concentrate on maximising the power of the composition.

This work belongs to the genre of mermaid subjects that figures so prominently in Victorian art, including Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones’ The Depths of the Sea, 1886 and J. W. Waterhouse’s The Siren, 1900. A theme which appealed to both the Romantics and the Symbolists, it is unusual that Draper’s sea maiden has no fishtail, a decision which he credited as being guided by the authority of the poet Swinburne and his work Chastelard (1865).

Sir George Clausen was one of the leading British Impressionists; his pastel Head of a young girl (Rose Grimsdale), 1890 (estimate: £250,000-350,000) is a rare and particularly beautiful example of his oeuvre. Like many other artists of his generation, Clausen was fascinated by the romantic idea of the human spirit soaring at the sound of the lark. This was a period when children in rural areas were taught to read the sky and the movement of birds was viewed as a vital clue to what may happen to untended crops and livestock. Perhaps this is why this arresting child is looking upwards with the extraordinary intensity of youthful innocence; her striking freshness of complexion illustrating Clausen’s masterful handling of the medium. A keen student of Degas’ work, the light, colour, composition, style and subject matter of this work on paper combine to produce one of the most charming Clausens to feature at auction in recent years. This sale features a total of four works by the artist, including his captivating painting The Morning Walk, 1881 (estimate: £100,000-150,000).

Throughout his celebrated artistic career, Henry Herbert La Thangue focused on rural idylls in England and around Europe, utilising local people as models. In 1904, having painted in the hill villages of Provence for two years, he went on to explore the untouched Italian coastline of Liguria. Ligurian Grapes (estimate: £200,000-300,000), is part of a monumental sequence of four works which began around 1905 with a picture of an orange seller, that was possibly painted on the same coastal road. Making Ligurian Lace provides the strongest echoes to the present lot, as it depicts the same young woman working alongside her companion. The pictures were shown together at the Royal Academy in 1907, where they were warmly regarded as being particularly strong works.

http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22746#action=refine&intSaleID=22746&sid=c805987a-48a8-44a6-b845-95f20dc43634

Charles Green - 'Something Wrong Somewhere'



1868
Watercolour and bodycolour
19.5 x 14.5"
V&A

William J. Webbe - Springtime



signed
1861
circular diam. 13.5"

Webbe lived on the Isle of Wight from 1855 - 1860. He liked roundals and seems in this painting to have been influenced by Holman Hunt.

John Frederick Herring Jnr - A Farmyard Scene



signed
28 x 30"

John Frederick Herring Snr - Waiting for the return of the Ferry boat



signed and dated 1841
38.5 x 49.5"

exhibited Royal Society of British Artists 1841

Charles Landseer - Azim, a Grey Arab Stallian



signed with monogram
1861
9 x 13.5"

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Rural Cottage

Edwin Henry Landseer - Jocko and a Hedgehog




signed and dated 1828
40 x 50"

RA 1874
Another version of this painting dated 1828 is in Milwaukee

Myles Birket Foster - two paintings




[The Primrose Gatherers]
Watercolour heightened with bodycolour
signed with monogram
13.5 x 23.5"

[The Hayfield]
Watercolour heightened with bodycolour
signed with monogram
14 x 24"


http://www.sphinxfineart.com/Foster-Myles-Birket-DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=45&tabindex=44&artistid=30564

John Atkinson Grimshaw - Heath Street, Hampstead



signed and dated 1882
oil on board
11.5 x 19"

At the time Grimshaw was living at Manresa Road, Chelsea

John Atkinson Grimshaw - Liverpool




20 x 29"
signed

Depicts the Liverpool waterfront looking N from Wapping. The Liverpool Customs House is on the right and the Salthoudr docks are on the left.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Charles Altramont Doyle



[Saint Giles - His Bells]
Watercolour and ink
37 5/8 x 25"
St. Giles Cathredral

Charles Altamont Doyle (25 March 1832 – 10 October 1893) was a Victorian artist. He was the brother of the artist Richard Doyle, and the son of the artist John Doyle. Although the family was Irish, Doyle was born and raised in England.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Altamont_Doyle

http://www.ils.unc.edu/dpr/path/charlesdoyle/introduction.htm

Margaret Fuller




Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendental movement. She was the first full-time female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Fuller

Henry John Kinnaird - Near Cricksee Ferry, by the Crouch, Essex




signed l.r.
oil on canvas
18 x 32 1/4"

http://www.baronfineart.com/Gallery/henry_john_kinnaird.htm

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5231487