DESIRABILIA
FINDERS KEEPERS
Antiques and collectables for modern people
An original print by Michael Kenny; title: "OPPOSITION"; signed in pencil and dated 1972; red and black ink on white paper; 15/22; price £1,750.
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Adapted from the Guardian obituary of Michael Kenny:
​Michael Kenny was born in Liverpool, son of an engineer who was to help with the structural solutions to more ambitious pieces. He dropped A-level science at St Francis Xavier's Jesuit college to study at Liverpool college of art where two fellow students were Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon.
Sutcliffe introduced Kenny to the beatnik avant-garde of the 60s. Kenny had his first one-man show in 1964 at the Bear Lane gallery in Oxford when he was 23 and a student at the Slade.
Michael Kenny, artist, born June 10 1941; died December 28 1999.
MARA TRANLONG
A Girl with Blossom. Oil painting by Mara Tranlong. 1972. School of Paris.
Tran Long was born in 1935. Her highly stylised paintings have been reproduced as prints. This has now been sent to a "bricks and mortar" fine art auction so will be findable on The Saleroom.com before the end of the year.
SOLD.
ERNEST LESSIEUX WATERCOLOUR
A Viaduct on the Amalfi Coast by Ernest Louis Lessieux (1848-1925)
A glowing pencil and watercolour painting thought to show a stretch of the Amalfi coast in Southern Italy. In the foreground a boat is beached and covered by a tarpaulin; in the middle distance a shaded viaduct hugs the cliff and takes the eye to the sunlight.
Signed: "E Lessieux" lower left corner. The label shows it was framed by "Aitken Dott" which later became "The Scottish Gallery". Unfortunately, the handwriting on the Dott label is very feint and I can't make it out. It will just be a framing job number.
Size of image: 28 x 14 cm, or thereabouts.
Ernest Lessieux moved to the Riviera where he found immense success. He made sketching tours around the Mediterranean.
From 1878, he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Françaises.
Lessieux painted cruise ships for travel posters.Other projects included travel books.
His work is represented in numerous French public collections.
Foxed. SOLD.
HENRY MACKENZIE the Man of Feeling
An important figure in the Scottish Enlightenment.
A gilt bronze portrait of Henry MacKenzie sculpted by Samuel Joseph. Joseph also created the marble which is on display in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
The sculpture was cast in gilt bronze by Samuel Parker who produced the ormolu for George the Fourth's Buckingham Palace.
This library bust has now entered the collection of Mr Piers Lowson, Esq..
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