Ester
Esther c1885 por pintor francés Hugues Merle (1823 – 1881); que se especializaba en escenas de cariño maternal, inocencia infantil y consecuencia moral.
Esta religioso 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, 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.
Esta es una reproducción de maestros antiguos de arte digital remasterizada de una imagen de dominio público que está disponible como Esta es una elegante chica de glamour art deco vintage..
La siguiente información se deriva de Wikipedia.org y Rehs.com
Hugues Merle nació en 1822 o 1823 en La Sône, Francia y alrededor de la edad de 21 llegó a París, Francia, donde estudió pintura con el pintor histórico y retratista francés Léon Cogniet (1794 – 1880).
Aunque se sabe poco de la vida temprana de Hugues, se supone que recibió algún grado de educación artística antes de llegar a París en 1843; porque empezó a exponer en el Salón de París en 1847 con su pieza Portrait de L’auteur y en 1848 expuso la pieza Légende des Willis.
Con el paso del tiempo, la reputación de Hugues como retratista creció sustancialmente durante la década de 1850.; y como pintor exitoso y destacado, pudo atraer a amantes del arte serios que buscaban construir sus colecciones de arte..
Uno de estos primeros coleccionistas de arte fue el cuarto marqués de Hertford., Richard Seymour Conway (1800-1870); que compró su propuesta de salón Reading the Bible en 1859.
Durante la década de 1860, La lista de coleccionistas de clientes de Hugues incluía no sólo a personas del continente europeo., pero también coleccionistas americanos, como William Walters de Baltimore que encargó La letra escarlata.