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Egron Sellif LundgrenAbyssinien Ostrich Feather Merchant in Aden1857
1857
$2,992.17
£2,207.19
€2,500
CA$4,145.80
A$4,501.54
CHF 2,383.89
MX$55,175.93
NOK 29,501.61
SEK 27,877.46
DKK 19,032.15
About the Item
Lundgren visited Aden as a passenger on board the steam ship ”Bengal” on his way from England to India during the winter 1857. The previous year an uprising had broken out in India, known as ”The Mutiny". As far as British relations with India were concerned, the event represented a watershed, as a result of which the East India Company was abolished while India was granted Crown Colony status. Formidable political and economic interests were at stake and the British public knew almost nothing about the conditions in the country where the events were unfolding. The Times had sent one of their reporters, William Howard Russel, who had made a name for himself as a special correspondent during the Crimean War, and the photographer Felice A. Beato to report. The art dealers Thomas Agnews’s & Sons in Manchester who had previously published a richly illustrated volume on the Crimean War, now planned a similar publication on India and contracted Egron Lundgren. The contract guaranteed Lundgren compensation for the period during which he would be out of touch with his normal patrons, and copyright to any works produced on the outward or homeward voyages; everything he produced in India was the property of Thomas Agnews’s & Sons. From Queen Victoria herself, who often evinced a particularly warm interest in India, Lundgren received a commission for watercolors which he later dispatched to her at regular intervals (now in the library at Windsor Castle). She also supplied him with introductory letters.3
Lundgren departed from Southhampton 4th February on the frigate ”Pera”, bound for Alexandria. From Alexandria he took the train to Kairo. Following a ten days long stay in Egypt during which he explored the vicinity of Kairo, Lundgren boarded the ”Bengal” at Suez bound for Calcutta. On 27th February the ship reached Aden where it stopped for a few hours to load coal. It was during this brief visit he drew the present work. In En målares anteckningar (A Painters diary), from 1872, op. cit., Lundgren writes:
”Stranden var öfverströdd med svarta, halvnakna sydaraber och abyssinier, hvilka stundtals, förmodligen af djup melankoli, brådstörtade sig i vattnet och dök som slingriga ålar under det beckiga ångskeppet. Somliga af dessa infödingar sågos sitta på hälarna och utbjuda strutsfjädrar och ägg. Dessa modehandlares drägt bestod i det hela endast af deras eget svarta, glänsande skinn, men på huvudet koketterades gärna med en yvig peruk af gethår eller kamelull, färgad cinoberröd. Chacun a son goüt. Alla barn voro, såsom det heter, spritt nakna, de unga mamsellerna dock blygsamt bärande omkring lifvet ett snöre med en liten kopparslant och om smalbenen metallringar, måhända förlofningsringar. Håret var rakade af huvudet, med undantag endast af två svarta tofsar, en över vardera örat, en prydnad som på afstånd föreföll mig som horn.” ("The beach was strewn with black, half-naked South Arabs and Abyssinians, who now and then, probably from deep melancholy, plunged into the water and dived like wriggling eels under the pitchy steamer. Some of these natives were seen sitting on their heels and offering ostrich feathers and eggs. The clothes of these fashion merchants consisted in the whole only of their own black, shiny skin, but on the head they liked to coquettishly wear a voluminous wig of goat's hair or camel's wool, dyed cinnabar red. Chacun a son goüt. All the children were, as they say, naked, the young mothers, however, modestly wearing around their waists a string with a small copper coin and around their shins metal rings, perhaps engagement rings. The hair was shaved off the head, with the exception of only two black tufts, one over each ear, an ornament which at a distance appeared to me to be horns.”
From Aden the ”Bengal” continued its journey to Ceylon. It arrived in Calcutta on 20th March.
Lundgren spent about a year in India returning to England in April 1859.4 Thomas Agnews’s & Sons organized exhibitions of his large body of work counting Queen Victoria amongst its visitors.5 The plan to publish a richly illustrated book on the upheavals in India was never realized, however. Thomas Agnews’s & Sons got involved in litigation with each other and meanwhile interest in Indian affairs considerably cooled. Instead they sold the collection to the textile merchant Sam Mendel in Manchester. In 1860 W. H. Russell published his experience of the war, My Diary in India, in the Year 1858-9, I-II, with eleven lithographs after works by Lundgren.
Entitled "Struts fjäderhandlare fr. Abyssinien" and ”Aden”, by the artist on the reverse
Authenticated on the reverse of the mount by Carl Ulrik Palm (1864-1954), Director at Bukowskis from 1900, Stockholm 13 September 1905
Pen and grey wash heightened with white
image 24.6 x 23.5 cm (9 ¾ x 9 ¼ in.)
framed 49 x 44.5 cm (19 ¼ x 17 ½ in.)
Provenance:
Thomas Agnew’s & Sons, Manchester;
Sam Mendel (1811-1884), Manley Hall, Whalley Range, Manchester;.1
his sale, Christie’s, London, The Magnificent Collection of Drawings and sketches made in India at the Period of the Mutiny in 1858, by Mr. E. Lundgren, Member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours was purchased by Mr Mendel in its entirety. Mr. Lundgren accompanied the army of Lord Clyde in the campaign of Oudh, immediately following the relief of the garrison of Lucknow. The collection will first be offered as a whole, 16 April 1875, lot 59a ”Selling Ostrich Feathers at Aden”;2
The cotton magnate and conservative politician Edvard Hermon (1822-1888), Wyfold Court, Reading, Berkshire, whom acquired the collection as a whole (363 lots);
his daughter, Lady Francis, married to Sir Robert T. Hermon-Hodge (1851-1937), 1st Baron Wyfold, the same place;
the collection as a whole purchased from their heirs by Bukowskis Konsthandel Stockholm in 1929
sale, Stockholm, Bukowskis, Vårauktionen, Kat. No 381, 3 April 1968, lot 262 (575 Sek to Klingberg)
Literature:
E. Lundgren, En målares anteckningar. Utdrag ur Dagböcker och bref, 1872, pp. 20-22, illustrated
K. Asplund, Egron Lundgren, Vol. II, 1915, p. 185
1. Sam Mendel (1811–1884), the so-called "Merchant Prince" of Manchester’s textile industry, made a fortune by providing the fastest export routes round the Cape of Good Hope to India and Australia. His home, Manley Hall completed in 1857 was
filled with an impressive collection of art, much of it acquired with the aid of the noted art dealers Thomas Agnew’s & Sons. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869 he lost his commercial advantage and in 1875 was forced to sell Manley Hall and its contents
2. Lot 59b was a work entitled ”A Woman at Aden”
3. 2. Soon after his arrival in London from Spain in the autumn 1853, Lundgren had been introduced to Queen Victoria from whom he received commissions to depict life at the court
4. For an extensive survey of Lundgren’s stay in India, see S. Nilsson &N. Gupta, The Painter’s Eye. Egron Lundgren and India, 1992
5. In September 1859, when the Royal Family moved to Scotland, Lundgren was extended an invitation to accompany them. A studio was arranged for him in one of the wings of the rebuilt Balmoral, and the Queen made almost daily visits to observe the progress of his work. Lundgren’s body of works from Scotland are today at Windsor Castle
- Creator:Egron Sellif Lundgren (1815 - 1875, Swedish)
- Creation Year:1857
- Dimensions:Height: 9.69 in (24.6 cm)Width: 9.26 in (23.5 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Stockholm, SE
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1445216920372
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