A FINE AND RARE EUROPEAN SUBJECT REVERSE PAINTING ON GLASS

Property from the Estate of EUGENE O. PERKINS

Details

A FINE AND RARE EUROPEAN SUBJECT REVERSE PAINTING ON GLASS
CIRCA 1810

Well painted with a scene from a play by Shakespeare, most likely the 'Merry Wives of Windsor', depicting two well-dressed women conversing in a lush garden while another eavesdrops from behind a tree, a flower-bedecked garden urn engraved on the pedestal with the name PETERS rising above them against a gray, cloudy sky, separated by a narrow gilt band from the midnight blue outer border, SHAKESPEARE inscribed in gilding on the lower border--23 7/8 x 19 1/8 in. (60.6 x 48.4cm.), original gilded frame

Lot Essay

A similar painting, of Act III, Scene III, from the Merry Wives of Windsor, dated circa 1810, from an engraving published by John and Josiah Boydell, 1803, is illustrated by Carl L. Crossman, The China Trade, pl. 101, p. 125. Crossman in his discussion of these types of paintings mentions that the frames are "exact copies of English or American frames of the late eighteenth and early 19th century." He also notes that "most have a dark blue-black border painted around the subject, on the same sheet of glass as the painting," in imitation of the painted mats used to frame contemperaneous English and American engravings