'Souvenir of the seventies'

Details

William Bruce Ellis Ranken (1881-1941)
'Souvenir of the seventies'
signed with monogram and dated 1923 (lower left)
oil on canvas
44 1/8 x 34 in. (112 x 86.4 cm.)

Provenance

Lewis Bruce, Farley Hill Place, Berkshire, by 1943.

Exhibited

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1925, no. 182.
London, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, 1928.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

We are grateful to Wendy and Gordon Hawksley for identifying the sitter as Mrs Kelsey. She sat to the artist in a gown of the 1870s as contemporary interest in the fashions of the previous half-century was as strong as present interest in the couture of the 1950s and '60s. The painting can be seen in a photograph of the hall of Farley Hill Place, Berkshire, published in an article on the house in Country Life, 4 June 1943, p. 1013.

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