Figures / Genre

17th century oil on canvas painting depicting Vertumnus in the form of an elderly woman, allegory of winter. High quality work by an artist of the generation of Ottmar Elliger the Younger (1666-1735). A recent cleaning of this work allowed us to discover what seems to be the corner of a red cape at the bottom right corner. This leads us to believe that at some time in its past this portion of canvas might have been salvaged from a larger painting, the lost portion perhaps corresponding to the representation of Pomona, goddess of fruit trees, gardens and orchards in Roman mythology. The representation of the two characters together was very popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. A wax seal on the back of the canvas bears the coat of arms of the town of Lisieux (Normandy).

Vertumnus, whose name means "to turn, to change", was most likely a king of Etruria who, because of the care which he had taken of his fruit orchard and gardens, became a divinity after his death. What is certain is that his cult passed from the Etruscans to Rome where he was considered the god of gardens and orchards. His attributions differed from those of Priapus: he especially watched over the fertility of the earth, the germination of plants, their flowering and the ripening of fruits.

He had the privilege of being able to change form at will like Proteus, and he used this ability to make himself loved by the nymph Pomona, whom he chose for his wife. This happy and immortal couple aged and rejuvenated periodically without ever dying. Vertumnus gave her faith to the nymph and dedicates her inviolable fidelity.
In this fable the allegory is transparent; it clearly represents the year cycle and the uninterrupted succession of seasons. Ovid seems to support this conception of Vertumnus, since he says that this god successively assumed the figure of a plowman, a reaper, a wine grower, finally an old woman, thus designating spring, summer, fall and winter.

Sources: Benezit,Dictionary of Artists; Enciclopaedia Britannica (1911) ; Pierre Commelin, Mythologie grecque et romaine, Ed. Dunod,1999.

Artist: Unknown (unsigned).
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition, recent cleaning.
Dimensions : 65 x 51 cm. / 25 ½ x 24 in.
Frame: 79 x 64 cm. / 31 x 25 1/4 in. Gilt wood, very good condition.
Provenance: France.

This later 19th century European artwork portrays an elderly gardener sitting in a wheelbarrow holding a tool and a plant pot. Painted in oil on canvas, its origin is likely from the Nordic countries or Germany based on its style. The artist's signature, now partially erased, cannot be identified.

Artist: Unknown.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions: 46 x 33 cm. / 18 x 13 in.
Frame: 63 x 50 cm / 24 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. Very good condition.
Provenance: Sweden.

This oil on canvas is a portrait from 1887 by British artist Alfred Mendoza. It features a young woman smoking a cigarette in a relaxed manner, most likely Elizabeth Mendoza, the artist's sister. Elizabeth was married to Moses Coronel Pereira, a cigar manufacturer, and they lived in the same area as Alfred, which was home to a large Jewish community and poor immigrants. This work is signed and dated in the lower left corner. Original frame in gilt wood and plaster. An incomplete label on the back identifies the Roberts Gallery located at 759 Yonge St. in Toronto. Founded in 1842, by 1870 it was a renowned gallery dealing with British, European and Canadian art and producing high-quality frames. Throughout its 180 years of activity to date, it has had different locations within the same city, the one on Yonge St. corresponding to the period from 1948 to the late 1950s.

Alfred Moses "Mordecai" Mendoza was an English painter and sculptor of Spanish-Sephardic Jewish origin whose ancestors emigrated from Seville in the 18th century. Born in 1860 in Spitalfields, a district of the East End of London, his father was a keeper of the Jewish cemetery at Mile End, London, activity that Alfred also did for an indeterminate time. Little is known of his life and artistic training, but he is listed as an artist in the 1881 census and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887 and in Cannes, France in 1907. Married in 1897 to Annie Harriet Dobby, the Mendoza family resided in Tynemouth, Northumberland, but has also lived in France, South America, and Bournemouth, a seaside resort town near Dorset, England. In the 1901 census he is listed as an artist, painter and sculptor. His pictorial work covers almost exclusively portraits and genre scenes, among them, the portrait he made of His Majesty King George V in 1917. Alfred Mendoza died in 1925 in the Kensington area of London.

His son Montague Philip Mendoza (1898-1973) was also a painter, as well as a comic book artist, illustrator, and political cartoonist who sometimes worked under the pseudonyms Flam or Flambo. Born in Dalston, East London, he served as a private in the British Army from 1914 to 1920. After World War I and during World War II, he became a popular poster designer. In 1951 he became a comic book artist, achieving great popularity.

Also noteworthy, Alfred Mendoza was the great-grandson of Daniel Mendoza (1764-1836), a prominent and well-regarded English boxer and boxing instructor in the 1780s and 1790s. The British actor and comedian Peter Sellers (1925-1980) was also a direct descendant of the boxer.

Sources: Wikipedia; Art Uk; England Census; Bearalley; Lambiek; Dictionary of Neglected Artist Working 1880-1950; Roberts Gallery, Toronto.

Artist: Alfred Mendoza (1860-1925).
Signed and dated in the lower left.
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions: 51 x 41 cm. / 20 x 16 in.
Frame: 71 x 61 cm. / 28 x 24 in. Very good condition.
Provenance: Ottawa, Canada.

This vintage scene painting, painted in 1943, depicts a woman gracefully pouring a cup of tea. Accredited to Mrs. Lagergren, as indicated by a label on the back of the Värmland Museum where it was exhibited, this piece is oil on hardboard and comes with a gilded frame in very good condition.

Arne Erik Kilsby, born September 24, 1895 in Visnum, Värmland, Sweden, died in 1989, was a Swedish painter.

Kilsby studied art at the Althin School of Painting in 1919 and at the Royal Institute of Art in 1920-1922. He then continued his studies with Othon Friesz in Paris.

Kilsby made his debut in the exhibition of the Värmland Art Association in Karlstad in 1927. The following year he participated with 25 works in the artist group De 13 in an exhibition at Liljevalchs konsthall. He exhibited separately at Modern Art in a Home Environment in Stockholm in 1945 and at Värmlands Museum in 1931 and 1951.

His art consists of still lifes, portraits and intimate landscape depictions. Kilsby is represented at Värmlands museum, the Swedish Arts Council, Södersjukhuset, St. Erik's and St. Görans hospital in Stockholm.

Source: Wikipedia.

Artist: Arne Kilsby (1895-1989).
Signed and dated in the lower right.
Medium: Oil on hardboard.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions: 55 x 46 cm. / 21 1/2 x 18 in.
Frame: 73 x 62 cm. / 28 3/4 x 24 1/2 in. Very good condition.
Origin: Sweden.

This elegant oil painting by Claudine Déséglise captures the mundane scene of a racecourse, probably at Longchamps in Paris. Exhibited in 1953 at the Salon des Independants, this original piece is signed by the artist and displayed in a modern black wood frame. A timeless and captivating addition to any art collection.

Claudine Marie Jeanne Déséglise was a French naïf painter. She was born on 7 December 1917 in Vire (Calvados), where her father, a military doctor, was stationed during the war. She studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She had her studio in Montmartre and exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendants between 1937 and 1953. Her work mainly comprised genre scenes and still lifes.

Claudine Déséglise died on 24 August 1990 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Source: Dictionnaire des peintres à Montmartre, Roussard 1999; Archives de France.

Artist: Claudine Déséglise (1917-1990).
Signed in the lower right corner.
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions: 65 x 54 cm. / 25 1/2 x 21 1/4 in.
Frame: 68,5 x 57,5 cm. / 7 x 22 3/4. Very good condition with some signs of use.
Provenance: Sweden.

This beautiful portrait captures the delicate and intimate essence of a woman in profile, as she sits and looks through a magazine. Her gaze appears abstracted, perhaps indicating that she is viewing through a window, where the light shines upon her face. She is wearing a violet dress with gold trimmings. A bouquet of violets in a glass vase on a table completes the scene. Painted with oil on canvas, this piece is in excellent condition with only minor craquelure on the forehead and evidence of previous restoration. The artwork is signed and dated by the artist in 1923 and is accompanied by its original frame, a stunning gilded carved wood design.

There are many epithets that fit the Finnish talented and cosmopolitan Hugo Elias Backmansson. He was an officer, a battle painter, a world traveller and a chess master. Born April 17, 1860 in Paimio (at that time Finland belonged to the Russian Empire). He studied at Turku Drawing School (1870–73). After his officer's training at Cadet School of Fredrikshamn, Backmansson got a job in the Izmailovsky regiment in St. Petersburg and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in this city (1894–99), there he also studied battle painting with excellent ingenuity. In 1905 he took part in the Russo-Japanese War as a war reporter and battle painter. Backmansson made his first trip to North Africa in 1898, when he fell in love with the light and colours and returned many times. He became known for his numerous depictions of military life and North Africa in watercolour and oil, but he was also a tireless portraitist and landscape painter for seven decades.

Backmansson is represented, among others, in Åbo Akademi, the Amos Anderson Art Museum, the Athenaeum Art Museum, Lahden Museum, Gösta Serlachius Museum, Turku Art Museum, Ett hem Museum and the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

The artist died November 19, 1953 in Helsinki, at the ninety-three, succumbing to a fall from a tramway.

Sources: Wikipedia; Hugo Backmansson - Artist, officer and adventurer, Swedish Literature Society in Finland, 2010.

Artist: Hugo Backmansson (1860-1953).
Signed and dated in the upper right-hand corner.
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions : 52 x 63 cm. / 20 1/2 x 24 3/4 in.
Frame: 62 x 73 cm. / 24 1/2 x 28 3/4 in. Very good condition.
Origin: Finland.

Quaint scene representing a young hunter negotiating his catch of birds with a young woman. Circa 1750 oil on canvas, relined. Spectacular Louis XV gilt wood and stucco frame, richly worked with a shiny and matte patina. Very good condition.

Copy of the original painting by Gaspard Gresly, currently lost or missing, made by his younger brother Nicolas Gresly (1724-1788), painter and art dealer, who worked in his brother's studio and made several copies of his most famous paintings. He also produced paintings for the small altars of the Besançon seminary in 1766.

Gaspard Gresly was born in Isle-sur-le-Doubs (Franche-Comté) on January 8, 1712, into a family of Swiss workers employed in a glass factory. He instinctively became a painter and succeeded above all in trompe-l'oeil and candlelight effects. He specialized in portraits with a local flair, still lifes and especially the painting of daily life intimate scenes of the bourgeoisie or wealthy peasant families. Protégé of the Count of Caylus, an illustrious Parisian patron, he quickly acquired a loyal clientele both in Franche-Comté and in Paris. He died in Besançon (Doubs) on February 17, 1756, at the age of 44, in a state of near misery. Most of his surviving paintings are part of the Besançon Museum of Fine Arts collection.

Source: Benezit, Dictionary of Artists; Dictionnaire des Artistes et Ouvriers d'Art de la Franche-Comté, 1912; Archives de France.

Artist: Nicolas Gresly (1724-1788).
Unsigned.
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition. Recently restored.
Dimensions: 77 x 62 cm. / 30 ¼ x 24 ½ in.
Frame: 96 x 83 cm. / 37 ¾ x 32 ¾ in. Gilt wood and stucco, very good condition.
Origin: France.