A Well Executed Pair of Late 19thC English School Oils on Board of Roses by Emma Magnus (1856 - 1936)

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Origin: English
Period: Late Nineteenth Century
Provenance: Unknown
Date: c.1880-1900
The Boards: 7.75 inches x 4.75 inches
The Wholes: 11 inches x 8 inches

Painted in oils on board and presented in their original moulded, glazed, ebonised and gilded frames with ebonised slips, the works depicting two pairs of roses in glass vases, both painted on cigar box lids and signed Emma Magnus lower left survive in original condition from the late nineteenth century.

The pictures remain in very sound overall condition and are un-meddled with. The frames have a few very small areas of loss to their edgings. To the reverse we find the pictures cigar box lids stamped with the Cuban cigar makers mark ‘La Flora Del Mar, Habana, De A.Murias y Ca.” and also some old annotations as to where the pictures were previously hung.

Each flower is wonderfully realised with the artist’s talent very apparent and they are beautifully proportioned, voluptuous and show the flowers full of vitality, yet somehow still conveying that they are susceptible to dying, with texture and shadow both important to the composition. The fact they are painted on cigar box lids makes them more charming, and as such they could have been a spur of the moment creation on the move, a study for a larger work, or simply because they were to hand and of the desired size.

Emma Magnus (1856 - 1936) was a skilled British painter and concentrated on still life and genre paintings. Her most famous works are ‘Wont You Buy My Pretty Flowers’ of 1887 and her portrait of Annie Horniman, the famous suffragist and theatre champion, painted in 1935, one year before her death. She has work hanging in the Manchester City Galleries, the Salford Museum & Art Gallery and the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery.

Do you know where the wild roses grow, so sweet and scarlet and free?

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