THIS STEEL ENGRAVING IS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION WITH MINIMAL SOILING AND AGE RELATED PAPER TONING.
THE EDGES OF THE PAPER HAVE LIGHT BUMPS AND IMPERFECTIONS. The top edge has tiny nicks where the print had been sewn into the binding.
THIS WAS PRINTED IN 1860 IN LONDON BY JAMES S. VIRTUE. PAPER SIZE IS APPROXIMATELY 9 3/8" X 12 1/2".
THE ORIGINAL PAPER WAS BOUND INTO A VOLUME OF "THE ART JOURNAL" AND HAS LOST APPROXIMATELY 1/8 OF AN INCH ALONG THE EDGE THAT WAS CONNECTED IN THE BOOK.
VERY MINOR HANDLING MARKS FOR A PRINT ON HEAVY STOCK PAPER THAT IS NEARLY 165 YEARS OLD.
This Portrait of a Woman may be the ‘picture of a woman with her hands one uppon another’ listed in Rubens’s house at his death. When the Lunden collection became available in the early nineteenth century, George IV bought this painting (along with The Farm at Laken), as a portrait of Rubens’s wife, Helena Fourment. The Chapeau de Paille (National Gallery, London) was also offered to him and is the only work he is ever known to have refused on grounds of cost. Both these portraits (Portrait of a Woman and the Chapeau de Paille) have an informal and engaging charm entirely consistent with their claim to be portraits of Rubens’s own extended family. In neither case is there much evidence for a more precise identification; the Royal Collection portrait does not seem to depict Helena, whose features are well recorded in other images, but the name of another Fourment sister, Elizabeth (born 1606), has been suggested. At the time this engraving was completed, the image was thought to be that of Rubens' wife, but that opinion has changed in the past century and a half.
PLEASE NOTE: THE LAST TWO PHOTOS ARE NOT PART OF THE AUCTION AND EXIST FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, SHOWING THE SOURCE OF THE STEEL ENGRAVING AND THE DATE AND LOCATION WITHIN THE CONTENTS.
The painter was JMW Turner and the engraver was Robert Brandard.
PLEASE USE ZOOM FUNCTION ON ALL PHOTOS AS THEY ARE PART OF THE
DESCRIPTION.
wantagh brown paramount 5