Francis Maltino

19th century oil, view London, the Thames, houses parliament, Francis Maltino

S Lawson Booth : Country House in extensive landscape with cattle in the foreground, oil on canvas signed and dated '98, 60cm x 90cm (35x23 inches approx image) size with frame appro...

The Mill, Dolgellau wales William Henry Mander 19th century oil painting A fine oil on canvas painting of The Mill, Dolgellau, by the renowned artist William Henry Mander Dolgel...

BEN MORE FROM AUCHLYNE ROAD oil, by Frederick Richard Lee & Thomas Sidney Cooper A beautiful 19th century landscape painting of the Scottish mountain (Munro) by the renowned artists Frederick Lee & Thomas Sidney Cooper The painting is an oil on board, signed by both artists and dated 1854.Housed in a gilt frame. The image size is 47cm x 62cm, whilst overall the size is 69cm x 85 cm The painting is in very good condition, having had a light clean. There is some slight crazing to the sky section as to be expected with age, ( see photo close ups with flash) the frame is also in very good condition. There is a handwritten label verso which reads Note: According to Cooper, it was during a visit to Lee in Devon that a mutual decision was made to '...paint some pictures conjointly'. Lee was to paint the landscape first and Cooper to introduce the animals - and, at Lee's insistence, to handle the financial arrangements. In the late 1840s both artists were at the height of their popularity and their exhibited collaborations in the Dutch tradition created a 'great sensation' at the Royal Academy when they first appeared. Prince Albert commented that they had '...caused a new want among patrons' and pronounced them 'the Beaumont and Fletcher...

A fine 19th century oil on canvas painting "South Pier, Sunderland " signed and indistinctly dated 1844, the size of the painting being approx. 45 x 80 cm whilst overall size bei...

The Announcing Angel Carlo Maratta (Camerano, 1625 – Rome, 1713)Workshop Oil on canvas 63 x 75 cm. - Gilded wood frame 89 x 75 cm. Excellent condition, restored, 19th century ...

George Smith of Chichester (Chichester 1714-1776) Landscape with figures resting by a river; River landscape with figures outside a thatched cottag...

PIETRO MONTANINI (Perugia, Italy, 1619 - 1689) Title: Landscape Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: without frame 50 x 65 cm - with frame 64 x 79 cm An...

The Great Fire of London in September 1666 was one of the greatest disasters in the city’s history. The City, with its wooden houses crowded together in narrow streets, was a natural fire risk, and predictions that London would burn down became a shocking reality. The fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane, an area near the Thames teeming with warehouses and shops full of flammable materials, such as timber, oil, coal, pitch and turpentine. Inevitably the fire spread rapidly from this area into the City. Our painting depicts the impact of the fire on those who were caught in it and creates a very dramatic impression of what the fire was like. Closer inspection reveals a scene of chaos and panic with people running out of the gates. It shows Cripplegate in the north of the City, with St Giles without Cripplegate to its left, in flames (on the site of the present day Barbican). The painting probably represents the fire on the night of Tuesday 4 September, when four-fifths of the City was burning at once, including St Paul's Cathedral. Old St Paul’s can be seen to the right of the canvas, the medieval church with its thick stone walls, was considered a place of safety, but the building was covered in wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of being restored by the then little known architect, Christopher Wren and caught fire. Our painting seems to depict a specific moment on the Tuesday night when the lead on St Paul’s caught fire and, as the diarist John Evelyn described: ‘the stones of Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream and the very pavements glowing with the firey redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.’ Although the loss of life was minimal, some accounts record only sixteen perished, the magnitude of the property loss was shocking – some four hundred and thirty acres, about eighty per cent of the City proper was destroyed, including over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and fifty-two Guild Halls. Thousands were homeless and financially ruined. The Great Fire, and the subsequent fire of 1676, which destroyed over six hundred houses south of the Thames, changed the appearance of London forever. The one constructive outcome of the Great Fire was that the plague, which had devastated the population of London since 1665, diminished greatly, due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the blaze. The fire was widely reported in eyewitness accounts, newspapers, letters and diaries. Samuel Pepys recorded climbing the steeple of Barking Church from which he viewed the destroyed City: ‘the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw.’ There was an official enquiry into the causes of the fire, petitions to the King and Lord Mayor to rebuild, new legislation and building Acts. Naturally, the fire became a dramatic and extremely popular subject for painters and engravers. A group of works relatively closely related to the present picture have been traditionally ascribed to Jan Griffier...