An artist-dealer-shopkeeper in NH whose taste I love, and who knows mine, pulled this one out just for me this week when I stopped by—and of course it’s just my sort of thing, though my photos here do no justice. It’s really all about the details, and the simultaneity of all the smaller vignettes—two swimming beauties (the one at center with outspread arms looking like a radiant angel, with really wonderful face), and a third who seems to have sandwiched herself between two boulders for protection. Then a skeleton at lower left and a ghostly drowned figure pulled under and upside down. With what I take for a cormorant—often portrayed as a foreteller of evil and doom—perched at upper left, and a white gull (or dove?) flying overhead. Quite a drama playing out in these deep, rough waters—nothing less than a fight for survival, literal and existential; beware the undertow! And as if not readily apparent, the painter, a C.W. Broeg, St., noted not just one but twice, at lower left and right corners: “Allegoric Life.” Me thinks perhaps his most ambitious work!
Paper size 24" x 19". Framed as found: 26" x 21". Both painting and period red painted frame in good vintage condition, mid 20th century or so, I believe. I cleaned the glass and added a piece of archival mat board behind it. Wired for hanging.
*No international shipping on this one.
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