Fred Balshaw

Moonlit River Landscape - Early 20th Century English Antique Oil Painting

c.1920

A beautiful signed and dated 1895 oil on board depicting shipping off the coast, by Thomas Bush Hardy. Excellent quality work by this sought after English marine painter and a rare...

This charming oil on board by Lord Paul Ayshford Methuen RA depicts the Hotel d'Aligre at 30 Rue Damiette, Rouen in Normandy, France. The building, which is a 16th century mansion in the centre of the city, still exists today. The painting shows the back wing of the building with the access porch to the main courtyard. Please see final image for a present day view with the addition of windows in the roof. The work was most likely painted during or just after WW2, when Methuen was serving as a captain in the British Army. He wrote a book ''Normandy Diary'' recounting his experiences with the Procurement and Fine Art branch, which was set up to protect works of art during the invasion of the continent. A finely painted and atmospheric work which clearly shows the influence of Methuen's one time teacher Walter Sickert. Signed on the reverse and presented in a beautiful gilt frame. Artist: Lord Paul Ayshford Methuen RA (English, 1886-1974) Title: Hotel d'Aligre, Rouen Medium: Oil on board Size: 22 x 16.5 inches (56 x 42 cm) including the frame Lord Methuen (Paul Ayshford Methuen, 4th Baron), RA, RWS, PRWA (1886-1974) was a well known painter in oil, watercolour and pastel of landscapes, town scenes and figures subjects. Born at Corsham in Wiltshire he studied art under Sir Charles Holmes and later under Walter Sickert. He had his first one man show at the Warren Gallery in 1928 and later had several shows with The Leicester Galleries and Colnaghi's. He exhibited extensively at the major galleries, and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy 1951, full RA 1959, member of the Royal Watercolour Society 1952, Royal Society of British Artists 1939, New English Art Club 1943, and President of the Royal West of England Academy. His work is represented in a number of major collections, including the Tate Gallery (five examples), the Victoria & Albert Museum, and several collections in the provinces. He lived in London and at the family home at Corsham Court in Wiltshire, where he established an influential art school in 1946. Further information The Hôtel d'Aligre is a private mansion located in Rouen , France. The first body of building on this location was called the Hôtel des Presses or Hôtel des Étuves , owned by the wealthy Dufour manufacturing family. Mentioned for the first time in 1446, it was rebuilt in the second half of the 16th century by Guillaume de Fieu. Guillaume Le Fieu (November 9, 1584) was treasurer-secretary to Catherine de Medici then receiver general of the Generality of Rouen and finally ordinary master of the Chamber of Accounts of Normandy. His daughter Marie married Pierre de Couldray, sieur de Féville, king's secretary. It was in this hotel that resided at the end of the 16th century Lord Clarendon, minister in exile of the King of England. The property then became the possession of the Dambrays, Sieurs de Montigny, then in 1729 to the Godefroy de Senneville...

A very beautiful English impressionist oil on board depicting figures on Caistor Beach near Great Yarmouth in Nirfolk by the popular English artist Geoffrey Chatten. This excellent...

A beautiful 1950's French impressionist oil on board depicting a busy coastal scene with figures on the beach and sailing boats on the sea. The work is very well painted and atmosp...

Seascape Painting of Waves Crashing against the Rocks at Pacific Grove, Monterey in California by 20th Century Post War Irish Artist, Tobias Everet Spence A...

Oil on board, signed and dated '1974' lower right Image size: 31 x 48 inches (79 x 122 cm) June 1987 Exhibition label on verso Original frame Provenance The Artist's Estate Exhibited "Raymond Booth, A Memorial Exhibition", The Fine Art Society, London, 12th August - 9th September 2016, no.62 "Raymond Booth, In the Wild", The Fine Art Society, London, 02 May -29 May 2017, No. 11 Booth was above all a great recorder of the natural world who could translate his observations of the Yorkshire countryside, its fauna and flora, into compositions of a beauty and intensity rivalling the greatest of his Victorian predecessors. This intense, yet intimate, landscape depicts a section of woods around Booth's home in Alwoodley, Leeds, where he spent much of his time. Here Booth has worked slowly to develop the densely worked, close-up, landscape in which the woodland and meadows have acquired a poetic quality through his sensitivity to season, weather and time of day. Raymond Charles Booth Intensely private, and possessing an obsessive work ethic and passion for the natural world, Raymond Booth earned a reputation as one of the greatest botanical painters and illustrators, despite rarely leaving his Yorkshire home. Eschewing the more fashionable modernist principles of the early mid-twentieth century, he instead produced beautiful, intense compositions in oil of British flora and fauna, that rival the very finest Victorian followers of the genre. Raymond Booth was born in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, on 8 August 1929, to John Booth, a member of the local police force, and his wife Margaret Edna. When Raymond was still a young child, the family moved from their first home in the crowded streets of central Leeds, to Fearnville Place, in the leafy suburb of Roundhay. His father was a keen rambler and impressed upon Booth from an early age a respect and understanding for the British countryside. Just a short walk from his childhood home was Roundhay Park, the second largest urban park in Europe, comprised of over 700 acres of parkland, lakes and woodland. It is likely that growing up so close to such an environment had a profound influence on him, helping to develop what would become a lifelong obsession with natural world. Booth’s early passion for nature was surely heightened by the number of summer holidays he spent on an estate near Winterslow, Wiltshire, where an uncle worked as a gamekeeper. In 1946, at the age of 17, Booth won a scholarship to study at Leeds College of Art. However, his studies were put on hold during two years of National Service, which he spent largely with the RAF in Egypt, guarding the Suez Canal. He returned to Leeds College in 1949, graduating in 1953. While at Leeds College, he had frustrated his teachers and fellow students by insisting on working in a more traditional, precise style, and rejecting the more Modernist principles that were being promoted. As a result, his teachers convinced him that he was unlikely to earn a living as an artist, and encouraged him instead to study for a teaching diploma. Shortly after graduation however, he was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis, a consequence of his time in Egypt, and was admitted to a sanatorium, where he would stay for the next six months. Years later, Booth would joke ‘I am one of the few people who can say, “Thank God for TB”’ (The Times obituary, 9 September 2015), as his months of recuperation gave him countless hours to develop his skills as a botanical artist. This enforced focus on his work gave him the confidence to submit a number of his drawings to a botanical art exhibition in London organised by the Royal Horticultural Society. These works attracted the attention of a number of prominent horticulturalists, including Dr Harold Fletcher, the director of the RHS’s gardens at Wisley, Sir George Taylor...

Signed oil on board landscape circa 1950 by popular French impressionist painter Alexandre Louis Jacob. The piece depicts a view of a marsh water mill. The yellow glow of the low Nov...

Marcel Brisson (b.1915) "French Flower Vendor" Original Painting c.1950 Original oil on canvas mounted on Masonite Dimensions 30" wide x 24" high Signed lower left. Good vintage...