"When hops are housed and gardens bare"" by Maud Naftel, 1856-1890. Watercolour and bodycolour; signed and dated 1888. Collection: the Maas Gallery. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Commentary from Maas Gallery site
Maud Naftel came from a well-known family of artists, the daughter of Paul Naftel and his wife Isabel (née Oakley, herself a painter in watercolours and the daughter of another, Octavius Oakley). She studied at the Slade, the first British art school to allow women to study art on equal terms with men by permitting them to sketch live models, and in Paris with the support of her family. She exhibited extensively, and wrote a book, Flowers and How to Paint Them, published posthumously in 1891.
The scene has been identified as Rectory Park, Horsmonden, in Kent. The picture was reviewed by The Star in 1889 when it was exhibited at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-colours: ‘a good example of her style - a graceful, vigorous style, which, free from the restraints of a rigid realism, yet wins admiration by its manifest sincerity of purpose and its sympathetic fidelity to nature’.
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Created 18 May 2014
Last modified 12 March 2022