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Edith Martineau ARWS Watercolour The Music Lesson

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Edith Martineau ARWS Watercolour The Music Lesson Edith Martineau ARWS 1842-1909 %%alt5%% %%alt6%%
This is a large and beautifully executed watercolour by the renowned watercolourist and Associate Member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours Edith Martineau, which is signed with her monogram EM and the date of 1868 in one of the flooring squares in the lower left hand corner, as shown. The watercolour depicts an Elizabethan costume scene, which is symptomatic of the artist's earlier work, and shows what may be a music lesson for a young lady or, possibly she is just playing to entertain the older gentleman. He is seated in an ornately carved elbow chair with barley twist legs and is wearing a doublet and hose, with a ruff and short cloak and buckled shoes. His faithful dog is by his side.

The young lady is wearing a gown with an emerald green bodice with pearl buttons, slashed or pinked sleeves, with a gathered stripe of the ivory material of the skirt down the bodice and through the slash in the sleeves. She has her feet on a footstool and is playing a type of cittern or gitterne. Her fair hair is loose and is falling around her shoulders, which may mean that she is in her teens.

The couple are seated in front of a very ornately carved marble fireplace and there is an oval portrait on the wooden panelled wall to the right of the fireplace.

Edit Martineau was born in Liverpool on 19th June, 1842, the youngest daughter of Dr. James Martineau a prominent Unitarian Minister. Her mother and aunt has some artistic ability and Edith and her 7 siblings were encouraged to illustrate stores that they had read from a young age. Her sister Gertrude Martineau also became an artist, but a genre and animal painter. Edith initially trained at Liverpool School of Art, but after her family moved to London, she attended classes at Leigh's School of Art, now know as Heatherley's, which was the first school to allow women into their life classes.

In 1862, aged 19, she became one of the first women to gain entry to the Royal Academy Schools, for a period of 7 years and then a further two years. After this she had some landscape classes with William Leighton Leitch and F. Newton and in the early 1880s, she took a term at the Slade School when Sir Edmund Poynter was Professor there, for further practice from life. This completed her very rounded art education.

She exhibited from 1862 at the RWS, RA, Walker Art Gallery L'pool, Manchester City AG, Dudley Gallery, RBA etc. In 1893 she exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

She was primarily a watercolourist as her works in oils didn't match her own exacting standards, so she set herself to mastering watercolours. Her early works were mainly historical costume pictures and classical subjects with figures, but she turned to landscapes, rustic scenes and flowers in nature in later years. She was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1888, an honour very rarely bestowed upon a woman at that time.

Her family spent their summers in Scotland for over twenty years, which gave her many subjects for her landscape works. In the Census of 1881, she was staying in East Farleigh in Kent with her married sister and completed a few fine watercolours of local cottages. By 1901, she was living at No. 5 Eldon Road in Hampstead with her sisters Mary and Gertrude, quite near the Heath, which provided further subject matter. The sisters were obviously reasonably well provided for, as they lived in a comfortable fashion with a cook and two maids. Edith died on 19th February, 1909 after a bout of influenza, aged 66. She left £15,995 nett.

She is listed in The Dictionary of British Artists (Collectors' Club), The Dictionary of Victorian Painters by Christopher Wood, British Watercolour Artist by H. L. Mallalieu, and Graves Dictionary which lists her exhibition history in London of 166 works up to 1893 when it finishes.

The painting has been newly double mounted in two-tone acid-free mountboard and is newly framed in a 1 7/8" decorative gilt frame to suit.

Image size: 19 3/8" x 15 7/8" - 49.25cm x 40.35cm

Frame size: 29 5/8" x 25 3/4" - 75.25cm x 65.4cm

Medium: Watercolours

Condition: Excellent. There is no foxing or fading and the colours are bright. The mounts and frame are new.
Price
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Date 1868  Mid Victorian Antiques Material Paper Origin English Item code as237a1919 Status Sold

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Edith Martineau ARWS Watercolour The Music Lesson
 
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