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A small girl on the cobbles of a Newlyn street, clutches a big
loaf of bread and pauses near a door, perhaps to answer a call from
her mother standing with a younger child in the upstairs window.
This 1886 image of Victorian Newlyn is one of two evocative paintings
of local scenes by the celebrated Newlyn School artist, Stanhope
Alexander Forbes, which go under the hammer at a Christie's sale
of traditionalist pictures in London on November 23.
In the 22in by 17in oil, called Daily Bread, the mother is probably
a fisherman's wife as she has hung a small catch of fish on the
wall.
Her apron too, hangs nearby and she has left her shoes on the doorstep
before going up to attend to her baby.
The picture, painted two years after Forbes arrived in Newlyn in
1884, is expected to realise up to £50,000, while a second
work, Picking Chrysanthemums painted in 1903, may reach £55,000.
The setting for the later work is believed to be close to Trewarveneth,
the house near the top of Paul Hill, overlooking the port, to which
Forbes and his artist wife Elizabeth moved on the birth of their
son Alec.
The figure in the foreground picking yellow and white flowers is
Elizabeth who was born in Canada in 1859. The figure further along
the path, bearing a canvas and easel, is a reminder that the couple
ran a small art school together.
At a Christie's sale of 20th century British art on November 18,
a dozen pictures by Ben Nicholson, whose second wife as Dame Barbara
Hepworth, will be on sale with estimates of £6,000 - £8,000
for a 1945 sketch of a Cornish landscape, to £100,00 - £150,000
for Still Life 1932.
Two sculptures by Dame Barbara, who died in a fire at her St Ives
studio in 1975, should fetch up to £50,000 each.
One is an alabaster form created in 1946, and the other, Sculpture
with Colour and Strings, was cast in bronze in 1961 in an edition
of nine.
article copyright © THE CORNISHMAN
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