Old Master Paintings & Drawings - Theo Johns Fine Art Ltd.

Jean Baptiste Le Prince

2010-10-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

JEAN-BAPTISTE LE PRINCE

Metz, France 1734 – 1781 Saint-Denis-du-Port, France

A party of figures in an interior,
with an Oriental Gentleman proposing to a Lady

Oil on canvas
61 by 72 cm; 24 by 28 ¼ inch

Signed and dated lower left: J B. le Pxxnce/ 1764

This painting by Le Prince would have been painted after his return from Russia where he had been for five years. It depicts a marriage proposal scene between an Ottoman prince and a Russian lady. Le Prince made many sketches in pencil from his time in Russia and when he returned to France, he used many of these sketches as his compositions for his paintings.

Old Master Art Market reviews

2010-10-10T03:37:00.000-07:00

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/Millionaires-increased-spending-on-luxuries-in-09/articleshow/6080140.cms

Wise investments in Old Master paintings holds value..

Old Master Art Market reviews

2010-10-09T17:21:00.001-07:00

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-07/rothschild-bride-s-turner-painting-fetches-record-45-1-million-in-london.html

Old Master Art Market reviews

2010-10-09T17:13:00.001-07:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/artsales/6816727/Art-Sales-top-heavy-week-for-Old-Masters.html

Fine Art Asia 2010

2010-10-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

We are currently exhibiting paintings at the Fine Art Asia Fair 2010 in Hong Kong until the 6th October. Visit : http://www.fineartasia.com/ for further details.

Alexandre Gabriel Decamps - Hunting scene

2010-09-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

ALEXANDRE - GABRIEL DECAMPS

Paris 1803-1860 Fontainbleau

A hunting scene, with two men tracking and shooting birds, one with a mounted gun and their retrieving dogs below by a low wall and one further dog flushing birds in the field.

Oil on canvas

13 by 16 inches; 33 by 40.5 cms

Signed lower right ‘DECAMPS’, in a period gilt frame

Provenance:

Private collection, Paris, France

Judge and Mary Webster collection, Millersport, Ohio, USA

Private collection Ohio, USA, purchased from the above in 1989

The current picture illustrates Decamps joy of Shooting; the atmosphere of the painting is very jolly as the two men are obviously most enthused by their sport. The dogs below send out a sense of excitement as one commonly sees on a shoot. The dog flushing the birds in the middle ground to the right is alert and attentive while the dog in the foreground wants to see what is going on over the wall with his paws rested against the ledge and his head straining forwards and upwards.

Decamps was aFrench painter and was born in Paris in 1803. In his youth he travelled in the East, and reproduced Oriental life and scenery with a bold fidelity to nature that puzzled conventional critics. His powers, however, soon came to be recognized, and he was ranked along with Delacroix and Vernet as one of the leaders of the French school. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 he received the grand or council medal. Most of his life was passed in the neighbourhood of Paris.

He was fond of animals, especially dogs, and indulged in all kinds of field sports. He died in 1860 in consequence of being thrown from a horse while hunting at Fontainebleau. Decamps' style was characteristically and intensely French. It was marked by vivid dramatic conception, bold and even rough brushstrokes, and startling contrasts of colour and of light and shade. His subjects embraced an unusually wide range. He availed himself of his travels in the East in dealing with scenes from Scripture history, which he was probably the first of European painters to represent with their true and natural local background. Of this class were his Joseph sold by his Brethren, Moses taken from the Nile’ and his scenes from the life of Samson, nine vigorous sketches in charcoal and white.

Perhaps the most impressive of his historical pictures is Defeat of the Cimbri, representing the conflict between a horde of barbarians and a disciplined army. Decamps produced a number of genre pictures, chiefly scenes from French and Algerian domestic life, the most marked feature of which is humour the same characteristic which attaches itself too many of his numerous animal paintings.

Decamps was especially fond of painting monkeys. His well-known painting; The Monkey Connoisseurs; satirizes the jury of the French Academy of Painting, which had rejected several of his earlier works on account of their divergence from any known standard.

The pictures and sketches of Decamps were first made familiar to the English public through the lithographs of Eugene Ie Rouit

2010-09-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

Charles Julian Theodore Tharp

English, 1878 - 1951

Madame Wellington Koo née Hui-Lan “Juliana” Oei (1899 – 1992

Oil on canvas,

197cm by 100 cm

Signed and dated lower left ‘Charles Tharp 1921’

This painting depicts a life-sized portrait of Madame Wellington Koo, who was the second wife of the Chinese diplomat and politician, Vi Kyuin Wellington Koo (1887-1985).

Tharp most probably painted this portrait on the occasion of the Wellington Koo’s attendance of ‘The State Ball at Buckingham Palace’ on 7th July 1921. Her court dress was described in The Times as “…cream brocaded velvet with a narrow train edged with trails of flame-coloured tulle. Her closely fitting, draped corsage of gold tissue was ornamented with diamante trimming and a cluster of green and crystal was fastened at the waist…”. Her evening dress was also illustrated on the front page of the fashion magazine: The Queen, 20.08.1921.

The archives of the London photo studio “The Lafayette Studio” have preserved several photographs of Madame Wellington Koo wearing a dress identical to the one in the portrait by Tharp. Her pose evokes the same atmosphere as the current portrait does.

Hui-Lan ‘Juliana’ Oei was one of the forty-two acknowledged children of the sugar magnate Oei Tiong-Ham, the ‘Sugar King’ of Java. She wrote two memoirs: Hui-Lan Koo: An Autobiography, written with Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer, Dial Press, 1945 and No Feast Lasts Forever, written with Isabella Taves, Quadrangele/The New York Times Book Co. 1975. Wellington Koo was her second husband whom she married in Brussels in 1920.

The Chinese diplomat and Politician, Vi Kyuin Wellington Koo, was born in Shanghai in 1887 and played a major role in expanding China’s relationship with the West. He is considered as the founder of the modern Chinese Foreign Service. His record of diplomatic services is impressive. Koo held the posts of Ambassador to France from 1936-1940, Great Britain until 1946 and the United States for ten years. He was one of the founding members of the United Nations. From 1956-67 he became a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague and served as Vice-president of the court during the final three years of his term.

Charles Julian Theodore Tharp was a portrait painter, landscape painter and sculptor. He was born in Denston, Suffolk in 1878 and died in London, 1951. He studied at the Slade and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the New England Arts Club, the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers Society and the Royal West of England Academy.

Mattia Preti

2010-09-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

This bozetto was painted by Mattia Preti as a design for the main frescoes above the gates of Naples depicting the great plague of 1656 and would have been painted at the same time as the two other sketches that hang in the Capodimonte Museum, Naples.

2010-09-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

This is a charming Landscape painting of Nevers, France. Executed in the late 18th Century.

Theo Johns Fine Art Ltd. - Old Master Paintings

2010-09-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

New Launch of the Blog for Old Master Paintings and Drawings in association with Theo Johns Fine Art Ltd. www.tjfineart.co.uk