Herbert Wilson Foster

Home from the Harvest Field, 19th Century Rural English Oil

1886

Oil on panel Image size: 20 x 16 inches (51 x 40.5 cm) Handmade gilt frame Provenance Family estate This preliminary oil sketch for one of O'Neil's most famous works, "Eastward Ho!...

John Rogers Herbert RA 1810- 1890 Oil on canvas, dated '1850' lower right on sword strap Image size: 33 ½ x 23 ½ inches Gilt Watts frame This striking painting, depicts David as a y...

Oil on canvas, signed lower right Image size: 33 1/2 x 56 1/2 inches (85 x 143 cm) Original gilt frame Provenance With the artist's son, Millie Dow Stott Esq., until 1912. Artist's Studio Sale, Christies, November 1913. Private Collection Exhibitions London, Royal Academy, 1895, no. 679. Paris, Societe de la Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1896, no. 1179. Berlin, VII Internationale Kunstausstellung 1897. no. 3533. Manchester, City of Manchester Art Gallery, 1912, no. 339. In the 1890s William Stott exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, mainly highly decorative works with subjects derived from classical mythology and literature. This painting was Stott's 1895 entry to the Royal Academy and was subsequently exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1896 and then on to the Berlin, VII Internationale Kunstausstellung 1897. Shakespeare was a favourite source for Victorian painters, and the tragic romance of Ophelia, from Hamlet, was an especially popular subject, featuring regularly in the Royal Academy exhibitions. The most popular and iconic image of Ophelia's death was, and is to this day, John Everett Millais's 1851 painting showing the confused and tragic Ophelia floating downstream on her back in a state of mad ecstasy, arms raised in a gesture of inevitable submission. However, although Stott chose not to pastiche this image, it seems highly likely that he was prompted to take up this subject, which had almost become a 'rite of passage' among Victorian painters, by the fact that in 1894 Millais's Ophelia was presented to the National Gallery of British Art by Sir Henry Tate. It appears that Stott was much influenced by John William Waterhouse...

Sir William Blake Richmond KCB, RA, PPRBSA 1842 - 1921 The Shepherd Egg tempera on wooden panel, signed with initials bottom left Image size: 8 ¼ x 5 ½ inches Period gilt oak frame A newly discovered work by the artist. Sir William Blake Richmond KCB, RA, PPRBSA was an English portrait painter, sculptor and a designer of stained glass and mosaic. He is best known for his portrait work and decorative mosaics in St Paul's Cathedral in London. He was the son of the portraitist George Richmond RA and studied at the Royal Academy Schools in the early 1860s. Influenced by his father and by Sir John Everett Millais, he is best known for his mosaic decorations below the dome and in the apse of St Paul's Cathedral in London. His father, George Richmond, was one of 'the Ancients' who were a group of artists who formed around the visionary artist and poet William Blake. Samuel Palmer was an other of the ancients and a close friend of the family. Our painting could have been inspired by George Richmond’s engraving 'The Shepherd', 1827, but in our panel the shepherd is turned round facing away, and is playing a flute instead of resting on a staff. But the sheep and other elements are there. It is also suggestive of Welby Sherman's engraving after Samuel Palmer of the same name and date, but here the shepherd is sitting but like ours turned away. William Blake's is an altogether happier image given the figure is playing to his sheep. Our painting is playing with some of the same ideas and feels like the same sort of period, and the ‘fresco’ like chalk ground is interesting, as is the pen and ink finishing on the tempera. All three are strongly influenced by Blake's illustrations to Thornton's 'Virgil'. The shepherd and his flock are clearly based on Thenot and his sheep in the Frontispiece to Thornton. Blake Richmond wrote:"If there be the least value in my pictures, it is due to such lovely early impressions derived from the sweet poetic work of many of my father's contemporaries, Calvert, Blake and others, whose shadows are substance still to me" [Sir William Blake Richmond, letter to his father, 50 years after the death of William Blake, from Stirling op. cit p. 28]. Richmond was given private art lessons by John Ruskin before attending the Royal Academy for three years. After that he spent a number of years in Italy, where an encounter with a shepherd called Beppino, 'a splendid speciman of a Sabine Shepherd', could also have gave him the inspiration for the painting we show here. Richmond recalls how he met Beppino on the hillside, and was invited to share the shade of the shepherd's capanna, a wooden hut. 'What a place! In an instant of time I was back into the age of kings, and I knew Romulus had lived and am sure that he lived in a hut exactly like this one'. That night Richmond dined at Beppino's hut 'on roast kid, hard bread dipped in Roman wine, goat's cream and white ricotta'. The shepherd had such an impression on Richmond that he sought him out on a return visit to Italy some years later, but was saddened to hear that Beppino 'had joined his fore-fathers in the shades'. He was moved to write the following, which perfectly expresses the mood of this painting and his tribute to a fleeting companion: 'Little events of this kind unite past times with present, create and emphasis continuity of human instincts, which seem to defy time and make travel so intensely interesting and invigorating to a citizen of this world. One need not go to the palace, far otherwise, or to cities and towns to discover the kernal of enduring civilisations. One finds it, if one wills to do so, in the backbone of the world, an ancient peasantry who have watched and still watch the progress of the stars'. Richmond was influential in the early stages of the Arts and Crafts Movement in his selection of bold colours and materials for the mosaics in St. Paul's Cathedral and in his collaboration with James Powell and Sons...

Oil on board Image size: 5 3/4 x 7 inches (14.5 x 17.75 cm) As can be seen in this painting, Surrealism served as a source of inspiration for Bergner, though he did not consider himself a surrealist but a lover of stories, and indeed narrative elements appear frequently in his work. He uses the “displacement” element, as the Surrealists did, and that is detaching the figures, objects or landscapes from the logical context and into a poetical-magical climate. Nissim Aloni noted in 1983 He paints as though to install stabilizers against the turbulence of the dream, and perhaps these stabilizers serve him in time as a touchstone'. The Artist Yosl Bergner was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1920 and grew up in Warsaw, Poland. With rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization was formed in the United States in July 1935, to search for a potential Jewish homeland. Soon afterwards a pastoral firm in Australia offered the League about 16,500 square kilometres (6,400 sq mi) in the Kimberleys, stretching from the north of Western Australia into the Northern Territory. As history showed, the plans went nowhere. But for a time, the Australian idea was at least worth considering. Bergner's father, Melech Ravitch, became involved in a serious investigation of the Kimberley Plan. In this way the Bergner family moved to Australia. Yosl emigrated to Australia in 1937 and studied in the National Gallery School in Melbourne. During World War II he served for four and a half years in the Australian Army, and later continued his studies at the Art School. In Melbourne from 1937–48, Bergner befriended many of the local artists who now epitomize modern Australian art: Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker...

Oil on canvas Image size: 29 x 24 inches Contemporary frame James Arden Grant RP was born in Liverpool in 1887 and studied at the School of Art there, where he also later taught. He...

ABOUT THE SUBJECT: In this 18th Century portrait Katherine Read has portrayed Daniel Giles as a child sitting on a rug playing with his drum and his hat beside him. The detail of the ornaments such as the patterned carpet, the folds of the curtain and the child's velvet clothing...

A perfect example of Charles Baxter's work. A beautiful Spanish lady wearing typical Spanish attire. Despite being unsigned, the painting has full provenance having being fully catal...

Charles Hunt Jnr British, (1829-1900) A Deal to be Done Oil on canvas, signed Image size: 24.75 inches x 34.75 inches Size including frame: 32.25 inches x 42.25 inches Charles Hunt was born in Kensington, London and was part of a dynasty of painters. He was the son of the genre painter Charles Hunt (1803-1877) and father to Edgar Hunt (1876-1955) and Walter Hunt (1861-1941) both of whom were taught by their father and became successful artists in their own right. Two more of his children Reuben Hunt...

Charles Hunt Jnr British, (1829-1900) A Visitor Calls Oil on canvas, signed Image size: 24.75 inches x 34.75 inches Size including frame: 32.25 inches x 42.25 inches Charles Hunt was born in Kensington, London and was part of a dynasty of painters. He was the son of the genre painter Charles Hunt (1803-1877) and father to Edgar Hunt (1876-1955) and Walter Hunt (1861-1941) both of whom were taught by their father and became successful artists in their own right. Two more of his children Reuben Hunt...

William Oliver British, (1823-1901) The Flower Maiden Oil on canvas, signed, Image size: 36 inches x 24 inches Size including frame: 47.25 inches x 35.25 inches William Oliver Williams known as William Oliver was a figurative and genre artist who specialised in paintings of young women. He was born in Worcester in 1823 the son of a William Williams a surgeon and Jane Oliver. He moved to London and enrolled at the Royal Academy in 1848. He married Jane Hughes on 30 December 1852. Two of their sons also became artists: William Oliver ‘Rhys...

Alfred William Strutt British, (1856-1924) Good Sport Oil on canvas, signed, old hand written label verso with the artist’s address Image size: 31.5 inches x 54.5 inches Size includi...