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Looking for information/author of painting
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Message
Posted
Probably painted at the turn of the century, but unless you can find a signature (my eyes aren't good enough, and wouldn't be even if I saved the picture and enlarged it, to find one) we're going to find this a struggle. Portraits in which the subject is looking straight at you, full face, are rather unusual - most professional painters wouldn't do that. A clue to the date might be offered if we could find out when Winsor & Newton left Rathbone Place - certainly a good few years ago.
I don't recognize the style as being typical of any painter from the last 60 odd years or so, but that's the thing about POL - sometimes, you'll happen upon the very person who knew the artist or sitter.....
Having saved it and examined it more carefully - I think what I took for stitching at the front of the girl's dress is in fact a signature, and date - the date looks like 1899, which (though the costume would be right) is a fair bit earlier than I originally thought.
Edited
by Robert Jones, NAPA
Posted
If it IS 1899 - another clue that it could be is the price of those boards - it's in good condition, though would benefit from a clean. The paint is very flat .... thin? Someone knew what they were doing, though I still doubt this is the work of a professional artist: not that this is a criticism, it just hugely reduces the chances of finding the identity of the painter.
Posted
This is getting interesting! Winsor and Newton left Rathbone Place in 1937/38 - just as well they did, because Rathbone Place was destroyed in the Blitz. What a route to take to identify a painting - establishing when the board was made....
Unfortunately, this is as yet taking me no nearer to the artist, but I shall attempt to persist. If all goes deathly quiet, you'll know I've hit the buffers.
Posted
Interesting research on the W&N Rathbone canvas boards, thanks for that Robert!
The sizes that I paint on would have cost me 9d. Now that puts inflation into perspective!
As for the artist, well, that’s an almost impossible challenge I’m afraid. It is indeed painted very thinly, almost too thinly on parts of the background and hat in particular.
I’m fairly confident that it’s by an amateur hand, so even with the painters name, further research would be close to impossible!
Nonetheless, it’s always interesting to see old paintings, and at least we’re able to establish an approximate date thanks to the Rathbone name.
Edited
by Alan Bickley
Posted
Hey. Thanks for everything! For better inspection, adding high quality link.
HIGH QUALITY IMAGE
Edited
by Andris Antovskis
Posted
Unfortunately, that hasn't made the signature, if that's what it is, any clearer (and it may not even be a signature). One thing it does show, though, is that the painting needs a good clean.
I'm not sure what Winsor and Newton used for their Rathbone boards, though will try to find out - it may be that there was an element of cardboard, which will discolour through the priming over time: even so, a surface clean would be helpful - get a professional to do it, the great danger of trying to do it yourself is that you could remove the paint rather than clean it; a tiny drop of Linseed oil on a corner of the painting should be instructive: if you apply it with cotton wool, and get a grey-brown stain, the discolouration is on the surface of the picture and can be rectified. Problems with the substrate are much harder to resolve.
I don't think - unless you can trace where this picture came from, and work back - that you're likely to be able to identify the artist.
Posted
That's probably the most difficult question of all to answer! I'm assuming you don't know who the subject is, because a name of the sitter can be helpful in pushing up the value a bit; the name of the artist would of course be more useful still, but I doubt we'll ever find that - I expect you've been over it with a magnifying glass: you got no clues from that, if you did? Have a try anyway - there are things that can be easier to see with the picture in front of you than they are on screen.
Assuming though that this is a fairly small, turn of the 20th century painting of a young girl, in oil on board, and by probably an unknown artist - you may get the sense that I'm pushing the potential value down all the time! - I don't think you'd get more than £100, even though you might insure it for twice that. However - I've not sold pictures/antiques for a very long time, and am only going by what I can see on auction sites - if you want a proper valuation, you need a professional valuer; take it to an auction house, preferably several, and see what they say.
You could also try looking at the BBC Antiques Roadshow website - I don't honestly know how helpful that would be, but at least it wouldn't hurt. In general, old paintings of unknown subjects by unknown artists which are in the region of 100 to 200 years old are not in great demand unless they are of completely exceptional qualty: this is a faithful representation of a young girl, but that is about the best to be said for it in commercial terms.
Posted
To have this professionally cleaned would cost far in excess of its value. I’ve cleaned and restored numerous oil paintings over the years, it’s tedious work but not difficult, but you need some conservation knowledge before attempting it.
To reiterate what I’ve said earlier, it has almost certainly been painted by an amateur hand, it’s unsigned, and I can’t attribute it to any specific artist. In my opinion, it would probably have an estimate in auction of around £40 - £60.
Disappointing, but it is what it is, that’s its value!
Edited
by Alan Bickley
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