ANTEBELLUM ca 1840 Oil FEMALE PORTRAIT 19th Century Artist Antique OVAL PAINTING

Description: Beautiful circa 1840 oil painting on millboard depicting a young woman wearing a red head scarf. 10 x 8 inch unsigned oval painting housed in distressed gold gilded oval picture frame. Overall framed measurements: approx. 11 1/8 x 9 1/8 inches. I consider the painting to be "School of Thomas Sully", which isn't really an attribution rather just me saying that it's a portrait from the period when Sully was active and the qualities I see in it strongly remind me of him. I posted some pictures to compare with known Sully paintings so that you can see what you think. Very rarely do I find paintings of this age. The portrait is unique. Even though it was stylish to wear such a fashion accessory in early Victorian times, period paintings of women wearing head scarves seem scarce. See screen shot posted for an illustration of fashionable Victorian ladies. I particularly like that our sitter's scarf is red. Red is an eye catching power color. See screen shot picture posted of a period Little Red Riding Hood painting by Sully. The oil offered here is an Academic painting, but I think collectors of 19th century folk art portraits like to see red in itinerate painters' works, too. This painting is around 180 years old, so it's not perfect per craquelure, some malformation to the board, etc. All in all, it displays nicely enough to view and enjoy. It's already been restored. I found the painting a long time ago at an uncatalogued 'country auction' in the Philadelphia area. When looking at period portraits of this style, Thomas Sully (1783-1872) immediately comes to mind. The style is painterly and artistic. What we usually see with pre-impressionist, antique 19th century portraits are stiff paintings that are just likenesses of the sitter. Sully had more flair. See my close up pictures to look at how this artist painted the sitter's mouth. Only an expert hand could paint like that back in 1840. I also posted pictures of a Sully painting in The Met depicting the artist's daughter, Jane Cooper Sully Darley (1807-1877). The sitter in the painting here looks like her to me. Thomas Sully was born in England but the family settled in America. He spent his formative years in Charleston, South Carolina and ended up living in Philadelphia by 1810. Sully returned to Great Britain a couple times, first to study and later to paint the Queen of England. Back then, it was common for American artists to source British art materials like the board that this oil was painted on. While the board is British, the painting is Americana. There was a strong 'art world' tie between Philadelphia and London back in the 1700 and 1800's. Benjamin West, who was from the Philadelphia area (Main Line, Swarthmore), was President of the Royal Academy in London. Sully studied under Benjamin West in London. Even though West was his mentor, Sully admired the portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence and we can see that influence in Sully's best work. The style is Regency era although the oil offered here was done in the early Victorian era. See screen shot picture posted of the label on a known, documented painting by Sully painted on a millboard from London. That painting was done in 1840 and Sully was not in England in 1840. In the National Portrait Gallery (museum in London, England), they have a female portrait (Mary Ann Paton), on millboard, from the 1830's, by Thomas Sully. In the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), they have another female portrait (Susan Campbell) by Thomas Sully on millboard. The painting offered here is also on millboard. To see an oval portrait by Sully, the oval Bust Portrait of John Harper Bonnell of Philadelphia as a Child is pictured on Artnet. Thomas Sully painted in a range of sizes from miniature to large. A portrait he did of Andrew Jackson, which sold for a lot of money at Christie's, was 9 x 7 inches. I've posted some screen shots of some Sully paintings that turned up at auctions and are in museums, to compare. I honestly think the painting offered here is better than some Thomas Sully oils out there. In auction-land, Sully style portraits are rightly or wrongly cataloged as being either by, attributed to, school of, etc., Thomas Sully. I'm not sure how much it usually matters what they want to call any given example. There are impressive sales results in each category. Bidders buy what they like. I posted a screen shot of the Findartinfo site categories of "Thomas Sully" so that you can see what I mean. There's a book to go through online, Register of Portraits Painted By Thomas Sully, listing 2500+ paintings by him. This is a portrait of an attractive young lady. She's a brunette with long dark hair and curls. Her features are sharp. In my experience and practically speaking, buyers want paintings of pretty ladies. Handsome gentleman portraits are good, too, as are paintings of children. I'm bad at guessing people's ages but I'd think the girl in this painting was around 30 when she sat for this portrait. A lot of the time, it's hard to prove exactly how old a painting is. But, in this case, we have the artist materials company label on the back and that helps us date it. That business, Waring And Dimes, is documented to have dissolved in 1842. This painting is from around that time and possibly earlier.

Price: 795 USD

Location: Pitman, New Jersey

End Time: 2024-08-20T19:59:47.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD