Lot 100 : OOC Roman Newsboys II Martin J Heade NY 1848
Thomaston Place Auction Galleries - Thomaston - 30 August 2008
2008 Labor Day Weekend Fine Art and Antiques Feature Auction
Show more images
Title:
OOC Roman Newsboys II Martin J Heade NY 1848
Description:
OOC - 'Roman Newsboys II' by Martin Johnson Heade (NY, 1819-1904), the second version of a similar work of the same title painted in Rome in 1848 that now hangs in the Toledo Museum of Art, this painting appears as #17 on page 202 in 'The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade, A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonne' by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2000, along with a comparison of the two versions. Painting depicts two young tattered boys hawking broadsheets marked 'Roma', one on left wearing a paper hat marked Pius IX, one on right perched atop a post, both looking to the left, looming shadow includes silhouette of a cross, silhouette of a Cardinal's hat lower left, in deep cove gilt gesso frame, SS:29 1/4" x 24 1/2", OS: 36 1/2" x 31 1/4", relined, retouched: lower left at shadow and lower right on walk, shoulder of boy on left, ear of boy on right, scattered spots along top. This restoration was under the supervision of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A rare example of a genre scene by this American Master, the two versions of this appear to be the only genre scenes that have survived. The first version was much more political, painted during the Unification struggle and the ouster of the Pope from Rome which occurred while Heade was in Italy; this version was done after the suppression of the revolt and the Pope's return, thus the presence of the cross, his name, the Cardinal's cap, and the removal of political graffiti and broadsides from the wall, the change from a Liberty cap to a sailor's cap on the boy on the right, the papers being offered changed from revolutionary tracts to 'Roma'.
