Esther
Esther c1885 by French Painter Hugues Merle (1823 – 1881); die gespecialiseerd was in scènes van moederlijke genegenheid, kinderonschuld en morele consequenties.
Deze religieus 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.
Dit is een remastered reproductie van digitale kunst oude meesters van een openbaar domeinafbeelding dat beschikbaar is als a canvas print online.
De onderstaande informatie is afgeleid van Wikipedia.org en Rehs.com
Hugues Merle werd geboren in 1822 of 1823 in La Soné, Frankrijk en rond de leeftijd van 21 in Parijs aangekomen, Frankrijk, waar hij schilderkunst studeerde bij de Franse historische en portretschilder Léon Cogniet (1794 – 1880).
Hoewel er weinig bekend is over Hugues vroege leven, wordt aangenomen dat hij een zekere mate van kunstonderwijs heeft genoten voordat hij in Parijs aankwam 1843; omdat hij begon te exposeren op de Parijse Salon in 1847 met zijn stuk Portret van de auteur en in 1848 hij exposeerde het stuk Légende des Willis.
Naarmate de tijd verstreek, groeide Hugues reputatie als portrettist in de jaren vijftig van de negentiende eeuw aanzienlijk; en als succesvol en vooraanstaand schilder wist hij serieuze kunstliefhebbers aan te trekken die hun kunstcollecties wilden opbouwen.
One of these early collectors of art was the 4th Marquess of Hertford, Richard Seymour-Conway (1800-1870); die zijn saloninzending Reading the Bible in kocht 1859.
Tijdens de jaren 1860, Hugues client list of collectors included not only individuals from the European continent, maar ook Amerikaanse verzamelaars, zoals William Walters uit Baltimore, die opdracht gaf voor The Scarlet Letter.