Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are offering for sale this finely executed portrait oil on canvas by the artist Alfred Jonniaux, who has signed the painting in the lower left hand corner and dated it 1922. The painting depicts a portrait study of a young boy, aged about 9 years, with brown hair and grey eyes, who is wearing a soft-collared grey shirt. Unfortunately, we do not know the name of the subject, although it may be possible that ithe portrait was painted in this country as it is on Winsor and Newton canvas.

Alfred Jonniaux was born on the 21st November 1882 in Brussells, Belgium. He studied art at the Academie de Beaux-Arts in Brussells. He was a Member of the Society Royale des Beaux-Arts of Brussells. After service in the Belgium army in World War I, he set up a studio in Chelsea, London and also in Paris. He visited Italy, as well as England and France and became a society portraitist. In 1930, he painted portraits of King Leopold of Belgium and Queen Astrid and became official portraitist to the Belgian throne.

After escaping from Occupied France during WWII, he moved to San Fransisco and, in 1946, became a naturalised American Citizen. He set up a studio in San Fransisco and also one in Washington DC. where he painted a portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which now resides in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. It is also stated in a couple of his biographies that he also had studies in New York and Boston, but we cannot confirm this. His many papers, list of paintings, correspondence have been donated to the Smithsonian, where they are in the art archive.

He died in San Fransisco in 1974 at the age of 92.

He is listed in Benezit and in The Dictionary of British Artists, as he exhibited while in this country, 8 paintings at the Royal Academy, 8 at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and 5 at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. He also exhibited at the Salon des Artists in Paris in 1931 and the Venice Biennale in 1933. In the USA, he exhibited at an Invitational at the Smithsonian in 1946, Baltimore Museum, the Vose Galleries in Boston and a New York Gallery.

In 1958 he received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Art from the Calvin Coolidge College of Liberal Arts.

There are three of his portraits in the National Collection in the UK, at the University of Sunderland Museum and Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service.

Auction results for works by this artist may be found at artprice.com (21 listings), artnet.com (27), findartinfo.com 15) and arcadja.com (13). The record price for one of his paintings since the year 2000, is £3,382 in 2005 at Christie's New York.

The painting is famed in its original gilt frame with a new slip and will be supplied wired and ready to hang.

Image size: 15 3/8" x 11 3/8" - 39cm x 28.9cm

Frame size: 20 5/8" x 16 5/8" - 52.25cm x 42.2cm

Medium: Oils on Winsor and Newton canvas

Condition: Excellent condition. No repairs, no craquelure, surface clean and taut. The original frame is in very good condition with a new slip.