ROSE

An original painting of a beautiful woman smelling a rose, surrounded by briars and golden leaves and dressed in an elaborate, bride-like dress and veil adorned with many styles of lace and ruffles, with a tree and mountains behind her. Very delicately rendered in ink and watercolour on vellum. Signed at the bottom right corner. Window mounted and framed. The painting measures 17 x 22.3 cm, while the frame measures 39.5 x 46 cm. In very good condition, the vellum very lightly [naturally] toned and waved.

A wonderfully characteristic example of the work of the Scottish artist Annie French (1872-1965), demonstrating her typically delicate, fluid style and her fine, sweeping line, which together lend the image an airy and subtly dynamic atmosphere, and depicting her most visited themes of beautifully adorned women and nature. French attended and later taught at the Glasgow School of Art alongside her contemporaries Margaret and Frances MacDonald and Jessie M. King at a time when Scottish art and design was enjoying a period of particular innovation and renown. The Glasgow School's distinctive collective style helped to shape the aesthetics of the British Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements at the turn of the twentieth century and beyond.