Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are offering for sale this lovely oil painting on canvas by the artist Marie Antoinette Henriette Luplau, who has signed the painting Marie Luplau in the lower left hand corner and dated it 91 for 1891. There is a label on the reverse, which we have been unable to translate from the Danish, except for one work Afen, which means evening. The painting depicts a landscape view of a distant town, seen across the fields, with the trees bordering the fields silhouetted against the setting sun. There are heaps of hay or straw in the field, one to the right of a track across the fields, where a figure is walking towards the town. There appears to be frost or the vestiges of snow on the ground.

Marie Luplau was born in Hillerod, Denmark on the 7th December 1848. She was to become an artist, feminist, suffragette and teacher.

In 1874 she attended the Vilhelms Kyhn Drawing and Painting School for Women, where she met her fellow artist and lifetime partner Emilie Mundt. At this time, women were not allowed to attend the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, as it was thought not seemly for young ladies to take part in the nude life classes. Women were finally admitted in 1888. She and Emilie went to Munich for eight months to study under the Norwegian painter Eilif Pettersenn in 1875.

From 1882-1884, she studied at the Academy Colarossi in Paris under Louis Joseph Raphael Collin and Gustave Courtois. She continued to spend extended stays in Paris and in Pont Aven in Brittany. In 1886, she and Emilie opened an art school for women, which continued until 1913. It was eventually assimilated into the Royal Academy.

Marie and Emilie exhibited together at the Art Union in 1891 and 1913 and at the Women's Exhibition in 1895. Marie received the Academy award in 1892 and 1893.

They co-adopted a young girl from a Copenhagen orphanage in 1891, who became Carla Mundt-Luplau, and this says much for the liberal attitudes in Denmark at this time. They lived and worked together in their house in Fredericksburg until Emilie's death in 1922 and Marie's on the 16th August, 1925.

In 2007, The Women's Museum at Aarhus ( Kvindemuseet) had a special exhibition to the couple called 'Symbiosis in Life and Art'.

Marie is listed in Benezit and there is information and photographs on google. Auction results for her work are available at the usual sites and prices achieved for her work vary from the hundreds to nearly two thousand pounds.

The painting has been newly framed in a 3 1/2" dull silver/gilt frame, which suits its colouring very well. It will be supplied wired and ready to hang.

Image size: 24 1/2" x 13 1/2" - 62.25cm x 34.25cm

Frame size: 31 5/8" x 20 5/8" - 80.25cm x 52.35cm

Medium: Oils on canvas

Condition: Very good condition. There are no repairs to the canvas which is clean and taut. There is a little craquelure in the sky area, but no stretcher marks or paint loss. The frame is new.