Frank Bramley A.R.A. 1857-1915

Original canvas. There are scattered patches of paint seperation to darker paint in the lower section and around the eyes of the woman. Scattered surface dirt. Ultraviolet light reveals some retouching to the hair, face and neck of the woman. There is also an area of retouching in the lower left quadrant and upper right, although an opaque varnish prevents a conclusive examination. Held in an ornate plaster gilt frame.
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Frank Bramley was born at Sibsey in Lincolnshire in 1857, where he gained his formative training as a student of at Lincoln School of Art under Edward R. Taylor. In 1879-80 Bramley went to study at the Antwerp Academy under Charles Verlat where he met and worked closely with Edwin Harris and William John Wainwright with whom he shared a studio. After spending some time in Venice between 1882-3, Bramley moved to Cornwall and settled in Newlyn where he met the likes of Stanhope Forbes. His connection with the Newlyn School and his interest in the typically unsentimental portrayal of ordinary fisherfolk is the reason that Bramley's reputation is so established. The present work, which displays all the elements of the hard-edged social realism of his later style, probably dates to the late 1870s or early 1880s when Bramley was in Belgium. This interesting early work shows the young artist experimenting with a dark palette and thick application of paint, elements which would be further developed in the late 1880s when he painted some of his most acclaimed pictures, in particular Domino! and A Hopeless Dawn which, in a letter to his mother in March 1885, Stanhope Forbes called "one of his best pictures."