Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are delighted to offer for sale this lovely portrait watercolour by the artist Anton 'Tony' Binder, who has signed the painting to the lower right and dated it Luxor 1924. The painting is a figure study of an affluent lady, with her hair up, wearing a blue dress of the period and carrying a fox stole. She is wearing earrings and a very long pendant on a chain. We believe that it is a distinct possibly that this is a portrait of Almina Countess of Carnarvon for the following reasons.

Tony Binder did sketches in the guest book of the Winter Palace hotel in Luxor, a very high class hotel where Lord Carnarvon spent all of his time when in Egypt. Lady Carnarvon also visited Egypt every year with her husband. When Lord Carnarvon died in April 1923, he had been moved to Cairo, where his wife flew over from England to visit him and returned to England with his body a month later. It is likely that the portrait, if it is of Lady Almina, was completed later, possibly from an earlier sketch. The portrait bears a striking resemblance to the Countess, who has been photographed in a virtually identical stole, but it her face, particularly her nose, that leads us to this conclusion. Tony Binder also painted a watercolour of the Winter Palace.

Anton 'Tony' Binder was born in Vienna in 1868. He studied at Academies in Vienna and Munich, but later lived in Alexandria. He travelled throughout Egypt, went to Istanbul, Venice, Italy and France, gathering material for his paintings, but is most known for his orientalist paintings. He died in Nordlinger, Bavaria, in 1944.

Autcion results for this artist may be found at artprice (193 listings, 83 of them watercolours), artnet (132), findartinfo (59) and arcadja (59). In 2011 a slightly smaller watercolour than this achieved £563 at Christie's.

The painting has been newly double mounted in two tone acid free mountboard and is newly framed in a 1 1/8" dull silver frame. It will be supplied wired and ready to hang.

Medium Watercolours