Esther
Esther c1885 by French Painter Hugues Merle (1823 – 1881); que es va especialitzar en escenes d'afecte maternal, innocència infantil i conseqüència moral.
Això religiós portrait is based on the Biblical tale from the book of Esther; in which a beautiful young Jewish woman becomes Queen to the Persian King Ahasuerus, after he banishes his queen Vashti; and later is able to avert the slaughter of her people throughout the Persian Empire.
The painting shows Esther in beautiful attire of fine silks and adorned jewels, precious stones and gold as she holds onto a decorative light green drape with her left hand; while in the background we see the king seated on his throne, finely dressed and adorned with jewels on his crown and chest plate, with a guard holding a spear to his right.
Esther is wearing a gold band around her long black hair, that is partially covered by a sheer white silk scarf that loops across the lower portion of her neck and around her back.
Esther’s dress which is composed of three different materials, starts with a red top portion that in embellished gold squares that have pearls at each corner and emeralds at the center of each square surrounded by another gold square rotated 90 degrees, creating and eye like appearance.
Then around her waist is a gold like sash that is overlaid with a bright green geometric design; and this transitions to the green full length portion of the dress.
She is then covered in a light gold tone wrap that has dark gold tone tassels along the edges, with a wide dark band that is sectioned into squares that have alternate clusters of four pearls, round rubies and emeralds.
Around her neck is a large loop necklace, a ruby necklace from which a gold and ruby amulet hands along with blue opal connected to silver wing like elements.
Around her upper arms of the short sleeve dress she is wearing are wide band arm bracelets made of gold with alternating squares of rubies and diamonds, that match the triangular square earrings she wearing comprised of gold, emeralds, robins, diamonds and pearls.
On her wrist she is wearing gold bracelets that are embellished with rubies and emeralds, pearl bracelets and a single ruby bracelet on her left wrist; while most of her fingers are adorned with gold rings that have precious stones embedded in them.
Es tracta d'una reproducció d'antics mestres d'art digital remasteritzada d'una imatge de domini públic que està disponible com a Impressió de tela en línia.
La informació següent es deriva Wikipedia.org i Rehs.com
Hugues Merle va néixer a 1822 o bé 1823 a La Zona, França i cap a l'edat de 21 va arribar a París, França, on va estudiar pintura amb el pintor històric i retratista francès Léon Cogniet (1794 – 1880).
Encara que se sap poc dels primers anys d'Hugues, se suposa que va rebre algun grau d'educació artística abans d'arribar a París el 1843; perquè va començar a exposar al Saló de París a 1847 amb la seva peça Retrat de l'autor i en 1848 va exposar la peça Légende des Willis.
Amb el pas del temps, la reputació de Hugues com a retratista va créixer substancialment durant la dècada de 1850; i com a pintor reeixit i destacat va ser capaç d'atreure seriosos amants de l'art que buscaven construir les seves col·leccions d'art..
One of these early collectors of art was the 4th Marquess of Hertford, Richard Seymour-Conway (1800-1870); que va comprar la seva presentació al saló Reading the Bible in 1859.
Durant la dècada de 1860, La llista de col·leccionistes de clients de Hugues incloïa no només persones del continent europeu, però també col·leccionistes americans, com William Walters de Baltimore que va encarregar The Scarlet Letter.