Henry Siddons Mowbray (American, 1858-1928). Siesta. Oil on canvas. 10-3/8 x 22-1/8 inches (26.4 x 56.3 cm). Signed lowe...

Description

Henry Siddons Mowbray (American, 1858-1928)
Siesta
Oil on canvas
10-3/8 x 22-1/8 inches (26.4 x 56.3 cm)
Signed lower left: H. Siddons Mowbray

PROVENANCE:
(With) M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1897;
Private collection, Vermont.

EXHIBITED:
M. Knoedler & Co., New York, "Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by H. Siddons Mowbray," February 1897, no. 14.

Born to English parents in Alexandria, Egypt, Henry (Harry) Siddons Mowbray enjoyed a distinguished artistic career on both sides of the Atlantic, as a decorative painter of classicizing murals for notable public and private spaces, as well as an easel painter who favored scenes of idealized women lounging in mysterious environments with exotic and often orientalist overtones.

The present work, Siesta, which he exhibited at his 1897 solo exhibition at Knoedler Galleries in New York, is a harmonious combination of his primary early influences: his training under romantic realist Léon Bonnat, his admiration for Jean-Léon Gérôme's masterful exoticism, and the languid beauties swathed in luxurious fabrics found in the work of contemporary English Pre-Raphaelites, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Edward Burne-Jones. The long, almost panoramic format of the composition, the asymmetrical arrangement of the subjects, and the bold decorative band running the length of the picture plane all point to Mowbray's keen awareness of the pictorial devices many artists were adopting from Japanese art in the last decades of the nineteenth century.




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