Esther
Esther c1885 by French Painter Hugues Merle (1823 – 1881); who specialized in scenes of maternal affection, childhood innocence and moral consequence.
Dette religious 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, smaragder, rubies, 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.
Dette er en remastered digital art old masters reproduktion af et offentligt domæne billede, der er tilgængeligt som en lærred print online.
Nedenstående oplysninger er afledt af Wikipedia.org og Rehs.com
Hugues Merle blev født i 1822 eller 1823 i La Sône, Frankrig og omkring en alder af 21 Ankom til Paris, Frankrig hvor han studerede maleri under den franske historiske og portrætmaler Léon Cogniet (1794 – 1880).
Selvom der ikke er kendt lidt om kramuelt liv, antages det, at han modtog en vis grad af kunstuddannelse, før han ankom til Paris i 1843; fordi han begyndte at udstille på Paris -salonen i 1847 med sit stykke portræt 1848 Han udstillede stykket Légende des Willis.
Efterhånden som tiden gik om kram, omdømme, da portrætisten voksede væsentligt i 1850'erne; Og som en succesrig og fremtrædende maler var han i stand til at tiltrække seriøse kunstelskere, der var på udkig efter at opbygge deres kunstsamlinger.
One of these early collectors of art was the 4th Marquess of Hertford, Richard Seymour-Conway (1800-1870); der købte sin salonindgivelse, der læste Bibelen i 1859.
I løbet af 1860'erne, Hugues client list of collectors included not only individuals from the European continent, Men også amerikanske samlere, såsom William Walters fra Baltimore, der bestilte Scarlet Letter.