Pair of Color Lithographs by Marcus Stone

Oil on canvas. 19th-century Northern European school. In the scene, set on a barren, snow-covered plain with a frozen river flowing through it, a large horse-drawn sleigh is parked on the bank, carrying several people: a woman with a child in her arms is preparing to climb aboard, watched by the driver, while another female figure, holding her child by the hand, walks away across the ice. It looks like a Nordic public transport stop! The work is presented in a late-19th-century frame, which has several missing or damaged parts.

The Hair Cut

Tapestry on canvas. The scene, set in the 18th century, features a wealthy, bejeweled lady drinking tea with a friend, while a valet stands behind her, preparing to cut her long ponytail. The scene, likely allegorical, also features a winged cherub grasping a lock of her cut hair, while another flutters upward. The canvas requires restoration due to obvious tears and loss of color. It is presented in a late 19th-century frame.

Oil on canvas. Tasty depiction of popular life with caricature-like figures: three full-length commoners are depicted on the street while they converse intensely with each other, exchanging confidences or... gossip! Unsigned, the painting requires restoration due to a tear at the bottom.

Pencil on paper. Bottom right, on both, the writing "Pietro Mulazzi sketched", with the date 1883. By an unknown artist but skilled in the use of pencils, these are the portraits of a bourgeois couple, whose gray faces emerge clearly from the paper background red. They are presented in contemporary gilded frames, with several shortcomings (to be restored).

Oil painting on canvas. Northern European school of the early 19th century. The painting, according to nineteenth-century taste, aims to propose more of a genre scene than a landscape: in the foreground, in a barren countryside landscape with traces of snow, the figures of a small family descending from a sort of sleigh stand out. made of wood, filled with straw and pulled by a horse. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a gilded wooden frame in style, with several defects.

Oil on canvas. French school of the late 19th century. Trace of unidentified signature at the top right. In the foreground, the faces of two popular characters who seem caricatured, perhaps characters in a theatrical performance: it seems the scene of a satirical courtship, with the man who looks lasciviously at the woman, certainly not young and attractive, who is holding a bunch of flowers with an expression between resigned and confused. The painting is presented in a frame from the early 1900s.

Oil on canvas. The Valencian saint Vincent Ferrer (Italianized Ferreri, 1350 -1419) was an apocalyptic preacher belonging to the Dominican order, who worked particularly hard to resolve the Western Schism, being a member of the Benedictine party. A preacher of great fame, he was endowed with a strong personal charisma, enjoying the attention of both the masses and the powerful; he crossed much of Europe on foot, and led an austere lifestyle. An eminent scholar, he wrote many treatises and a collection of sermons that were a tool for training and evangelization for generations of religious people. After his death, however, his fame was spread above all by the prodigies and miracles performed through his intercession. Iconographically, Vincent Ferrer is depicted wearing the Dominican habit, with his index finger pointing towards the sky and the flame of the Holy Spirit burning on his head. Very often he holds a cross or a lily, which is present in this work. The painting has been restored and relined in the past.

Tempera on pith paper. Chinese, Canton, Qing dynasty, ca. 1860. A collection of twenty-eight paintings depicting Chinese courtiers, scholars, and merchants. Originally kept in an album, they are presented here in a beautiful frame decorated with embroidered floral fabrics. Pith paper is a thin, translucent material derived from the pith of the Tetrapanax papyrifer tree, or "pith plant," native to China and Taiwan. Pith paper entered painting to meet the growing demand for small, inexpensive, and easily transportable souvenirs following the massive growth of trade with China in the first quarter of the 19th century. Because many were sold in albums and thus protected from light, they retain their vibrant colors even today.

Landscape with Flock and Shepherds

Oil on canvas. Signed lower left. This is likely Achille Dovera's largest work, presumably intended for an important patron. A small preparatory sketch on wood depicting the same scene has been sold on the market. In the center of the foreground, the work features a large flock of sheep walking along a path, accompanied by several shepherds. The animals emerge, enveloped in a great cloud of dust, from a passage through lush vegetation, in a flat countryside against the backdrop of mountain peaks. The Milanese painter Achille Dovera is considered a leading exponent of 19th-century naturalist and genre painting. A landscape painter, Dovera formally maintains a connection with phenomenal reality, which he reproduces with precision, even though color and light play a fundamental role; his rapid, moving brushstrokes lend freshness and immediacy to the scene without disrupting the forms. This large painting is presented in a beautiful, contemporary gilded wooden frame.

Oil on canvas. Lacroix's signature is at the bottom left. On the beach, the fisherman, having pulled his boat ashore and rolled up the sails, which his companion carries on her shoulders, is offering his fresh catch to a woman equipped with a unique water transport and accompanied by a child. The work is naturalistic and realistic, offering a glimpse of rural life rich in detail and particulars, both in the figures and in the landscape and surrounding elements on the beach. It is presented in a period frame.

Oil on metal plaque. Delicate portrait of a child, presented in a contemporary embossed and gilded metal frame.

Porch with Figures

Oil on cardboard. Signed upper right. Gregorio Mariani is best known for his engravings of Roman antiquities, but he also established himself as a painter of genre scenes, often depicting period figures, and as a portraitist. In this work, which displays an impressionist influence in its nuanced color and interplay of light, he depicts a scene of 18th-century city life: numerous figures, whose flowing women's dresses are visible, wander beneath a high portico, between whose arches opens a glimpse of the sea, crisscrossed by ships. The work is presented in a contemporary wooden frame.