Two Sisters

circa 1655

signed in the lower right Kever watercolor on paper 19 3/16 x 17 1⁄8 inches (49.2 x 43.7 cm.) PROVENANCE Dr. Katherine Kromm Merritt, Stamford, Connecticut, until circa 1990, from whom acquired by Private Collection, Vinalhaven, Maine, until 2015 In the warm morning glow of a country kitchen, a young boy entertains his little sister seated in a high chair. In return her adoring glance speaks volumes. The dramatic angling of the baby’s high chair, whose design harks back to the seventeenth century, animates the scene. Through an economy of means and a limited palette of largely brown and orange, Jacob Simon Hendrik Kever captures the richness of the moment and its idyllic rusticity. Josef Israels was the first to encourage Kever to study painting. He began his training at the Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, in 1869, studying with Petrus Franciscus Greive until 1872. From 1874 - 1875 he attended the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, also in Amsterdam. From 1878-1879 under the tutelage of Charles Verlat he was enrolled in the Koninklijke Acaemie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. His subjects included portraits, cityscapes, landscapes, flowers, genre and interior scenes in watercolors, oils, and etchings. Throughout his career he worked in Blaricum, Nunspeet, the province of North Brabant and Eemnes. Although not technically considered a member of the Laren School he also lived there from 1877-1879 and again in 1905-1922. He further maintained an apartment in Amsterdam near the Oosterpark where he resided during the winter months. The area must have constituted somewhat of an artist’s community as his neighbors were Geo Poggenbeek, Nicolaas Bastert and later Willem Witsen...

signed in the upper right Gio Batta Weenix oil on canvas 45 x 51 inches (114.5 x 129.5 cm.) PROVENANCE (possibly) Giovanni Baptista Weenix estate sale, Huis ter Mey, De Haar, Apr...

PROVENANCE Mortimer Brandt, until 1993 and thus by descent in the family to Private Collection, Baltimore until the present time We would like to thank Charles Beddington for ident...

signed in the lower left Artz oil on canvas 26 x 19 ⅝ inches (66 x 50 cm.) PROVENANCE D. Sala & Zonen, Leiden , prior to 1936 Private Collection, Florida, circa 1968 until the present time Much like their seventeenth century counterparts, a group of painters known as the Hague School in the 1870s came to embrace as their subject matter the native Dutch landscape and the everyday lives of its rural inhabitants, most notably the fisher folk of the coastal villages. Within ten years the Hague School artists’ works would prove so popular that incredibly a mania for all things Dutch would be felt throughout the world, and would dominate the art in Holland until well after the turn of the century. By embracing simple themes remarkable for their ordinariness, the Hague School succeeded in striking a chord with a public whose own placidity was constantly being rattled by the evolving modernity of the times. Conveyed through the employment of subtle tones, hazy skies and subjects of happenstance their mix of nostalgia and realism enchanted viewers. The Hague became the center of the movement because it was semi-rural surrounded by meadows, polders, waterways, dunes and woods, and nearby Scheveningen provided a wealth of material for artists seeking to paint the shore and its fishing community. Jozef Isräels was considered the dean of the Hague School and David Adolphe Constant Artz his most important follower. Artz began his training in 1855 at the Amsterdam Academie under Louis Roijer and Johannes Egenberger, and would remain in Amsterdam until 1864. During this period, he would be influenced by August Allebé but more importantly a lifelong friendship with Jozef Israëls formed. In 1859 they traveled together to Zandvoort. He would also be the first of the Hague School artists to follow Isräels’ lead of working on the beach at Scheveningen. In 1859 Artz publically exhibited for the first time, taking part in the Tentoonstelling von Levende Meesters (Exhibition of Living Masters). In 1864 he left Amsterdam to live in Zweeloo, Drenthe for a year. From 1866 until 1874 he shared a studio with Jacob Maris and Frederick Hendrik Kaemmerer. He was one of the first of the Hague School artists to work in Paris (Jacob Maris having preceded him by one year) enabled by his patron and benefactor Johannes Kneppelhout. Artz created quite a commotion upon his arrival by including in his baggage a large collection of Scheveningen peasant costumes. As previously in Holland, Artz during his sojourn in Paris continued to paint beach scenes and interior views that featured the fishing communities of the North Sea. During this period Artz became interested in Japanese prints which had recently become available in Paris, and painted a few genre scenes of interiors with Japanese décor and subjects. While based in Paris he also traveled to Scotland from May-June 1869, Germany in November of that year, England in 1870 and Italy in January, 1872. By 1874 he returned to the Netherlands to live permanently in The Hague. Artz in his own time was held in high esteem by the public as well as his fellow artists. He was awarded gold medals at exhibitions in Munich and Vienna, as well as a Diploma and Medal of Honor in Dresden. In 1879 he was made Knight of the Oaken Crown of Luxembourg and in 1889 also became a Knight of the Order of St. Michael of Bavaria. In 1880 he received an Honorable Mention at the Salon in Paris and won a gold medal in 1883 at the International and Colonial Exhibition, Amsterdam. In Paris he was a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by 1889. He also served as Vice President of the International Jury of Award at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, Paris. In 1893 four works by Artz were chosen to be included in the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago. An American reviewer wrote of this show “The works of giants like Rembrandt, Van der Neer, Ruysdael, Holbein and Franz Hals are almost equaled now by masters like Israels, Mesdag, Bosboom, Maris, Mauve and Artz”. Artz’s entries A Girl Knitting, The Pet Lamb, Idle Hours on the Dunes and Girl Sleeping on the Dunes were listed under the category of “Immortal Works”. His works formed part of museum collections of Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum and Municipal Museum); Cambridge, England; Chicago; Dordrecht; Glasgow; Haarlem; The Hague (Gemeentemuseum and Mesdag Museum); Leewarden; Montreal; New York (Brooklyn and the Metropolitan Museum); Oxford; Rotterdam; St. Louis; Tulsa and Zandvoort. Much enamored with the picturesque dwellings of the rural population, a favorite subject of the Hague School was the depiction of a family group gathered around a table sharing a simple meal. Ronald de Leeuw in his introduction for The Hague School Book remarked that the group “derived poetry from a view of the kitchen”. Artz excelled at this type of interior scene in which every detail has been carefully recorded in emulation of his seventeenth century predecessors. Vincent van Gogh, an admirer of the Hague School in general and Artz in particular, wrote to his brother Theo in a letter dated Etten, Friday, August 26, 1881 about an exhibition in The Hague he had just visited in which he described a drawing by Artz of an “old man and woman eating porridge, very important, very good and serious.” There is a large version of At Grandmother’s (131.5 x 91.5 cm.) in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. It was painted in 1883 and shown in an exhibition in The Hague in 1884 where it was purchased by the museum. This undoubtedly must have sparked interest in the composition and created a demand for the image to be replicated as several versions of the composition in varying sizes are recorded, and Artz was known for executing repetitions of his own works. Regarded as one of the highlights of the collection in the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma is another version by Artz of At Grandmother’s. The iconic nature of the image must have appealed to contemporaries as the perfect summation of the mix of idealism and realism that characterized these artists and their times. In a cottage under a wooden beamed ceiling a grandmother with her two granddaughters clothed in the traditional garb of Katwijk (where the artist spent his summers and maintained a cottage in the dunes) sit on wooden chairs around a gate-leg table in a kitchen sharing a simple meal of bread and an apple. The grandmother carefully slices a piece of bread while the younger girl looks on expectantly. Her sister sips milk from a small delftware bowl watching...

ink on beige sight size: 254 x 317 mm. PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist by Edward Laning (who inherited Marsh's studio) to Jack Henderson...

inscribed J. Moigniez bronze with brown patina, cast during the artist’s lifetime height 18 1⁄2 inches (47 cm.), width 29 1⁄8 inches (74 cm.) PROVENANCE James Graham & Sons, Inc., N...

Oil Painting After Sir Peter Lely (1610-1680) Portrait of a Lady Housed in a Lely gold Leaf Frame. Peter Lely: In 1647 he became a member of the Pain...

Oil Painting Portrait of John Campbell, 4th Duke of Argyll,, att to John Vanderbank (1694-1739) Housed in a swept frame which has been restored after photo. Canvas Size 50" x 40", Fr...

A 19th century oil on canvas, portrait of a young woman.This portrait is believed to be of Queen Mary II taken from an engraving of the painting, Halswell Park Sale, 1948, lot no.1323, Housed in a decorative gilt frame.Size overall being 70 x 86 cm high (27.5 x 33¾ inches approx) size of painting 54 x 68 cm (21 x 26 inches approx) To the rear of the portrait is a newspaper cutting of the engraving ,also a typed note regarding the provenance of the painting (see photo) Condition overall is very good, the Canvas has been relined, under UV there are areas of overpaint to bosom.Frame overall very good some minor self coloured losses Mary II (30 April 1662 – 28 December 1694) Mary, born at St James's Palace in London on 30 April 1662,eldest daughter of James, Duke of York (the future James II & VII) , and his first wife, Anne Hyde. Mary's uncle was King Charles II, her maternal grandfather, Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, served for a lengthy period as Charles's chief adviser. Mary married William of Orange. Willem Wissing, known in England as William Wissing...

A fine oval portrait of George Granville, PC, 1st Baron Lansdowne and "Duke of Albemarle" in the Jacobite peerage (1666-1735) Studio of Sir Godfrey ...

18th century Bust portrait of a gentleman in a blue coat with gold buttons (Said to be Edmund Hoyle, inventor of Whist) circle of James Latham. Housed in a gilt frame the size overall is 71 x 84 cm (28 x 33 inches approx) whilst the painting is 56 x 69 cm ( 22 x 27 inches approx) The overall condition is very good having had some restoration. The painting has been relined, cleaned and re varnished. There has been some strengthening/overpainting. There is a Rectangular patch repair along lower edge, centre, reverse approximately 5 x 7cm with associated retouching to front,all essentially done sympathetically. some fine stable craquelure throughout. Some minor self coloured losses to frame. None of the above detracting from a very attractive portrait. Edmond Hoyle Edmond Hoyle English card game authority, "the Father of whist" Born 1672 England Died 29 August 1769 (aged 96–97) London, England Edmond Hoyle (1672 – 29 August 1769)[1] was a writer best known for his works on the rules and play of card games. The phrase "according to Hoyle" came into the language as a reflection of his generally perceived authority on the subject James Latham James Latham was born in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland and possibly related to the family of Lathams of Meldrum and Ballysheehan. After some practice of his art, Latham studied for an academic year in Antwerp (1724–25) where he became a Master of the Guild of St Luke. He returned to Dublin by 1725, and may have visited England in the 1740s, as the influence of Joseph Highmore, as well as Charles Jervas and William Hogarth, is evident in his work of this period. Anthony Pasquin memorably dubbed Latham "Ireland's Van Dyck". Latham died in Dublin on 26 January 1747. Several of James Latham's portraits are in the National Gallery of Ireland collection in Dublin; one is of the famous MP Charles Tottenham (1694–1758) of New Ross, Co. Wexford, "Tottenham in his Boots" (Cat. No.411) and a second is a portrait of Bishop...

Portrait of a lady, traditionally identified as Grace Loftus,of Beverley hall yorkshire.Three-quarter-length, before a window. Dressed in blue and wearing a white bonnet. The paintin...