ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES, A.R.W.S. (BRITISH, 1859-1912) The Christmas Tree charcoal and bodycolor heightened with gum arabic on buff paper 17 ¾ x 14 in. (45.2 x 35.5 cm.)
Elizabeth Adela Forbes (Canadian, 1859-1912) Picking flowers signed 'EFORBES' (lower right) watercolour and gouache on paper 43 x 30cm Provenance: A. Beasley Esq., UK; Masters Gallery, Alberta; Peter Ohler Fine Arts; Canadian Private Collection Footnote: Elizabeth Forbes was a Canadian painter primarily active in the UK. She was friends with the artists James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Walter Sickert, both of whom influenced her work. After studying and working in continental Europe, Forbes settled in Newlyn, England, where she raised her son and established a school with her husband, Stanhope Forbes.
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES, A.R.W.S. (BRITISH 1859-1912) An apron full of flowers pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour on artist's board 14 ½ x 10 ½ in. (36.8 x 26.7 cm.)
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes née Armstrong (Canadian, 1859-1912) Girl Playing with a Cat oil on canvas, signed with the artist's monogram lower right and dated 1883 20 x 15in. (50.8 x 38.2cm.) * Painted during the early part of 1883 while Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes was staying in the artist's colony at Pont Aven in Brittany.
Huile sur toile monogrammée EA pour Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes "Enfants jouant à la corde à sauter". Etiquettes au verso : "Arthur Tooth & Sons Haymarket London" et "From The Fine Art society, New Bond Street London" (incomplète). Provenance : dans la même famille depuis l'acquisition. 75x100 cm
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes, ARWS (Canadian, 1859-1912) The Gipsy signed and indistinctly dated 'EAFORBES.' (lower left); signed and inscribed ''The Gipsy'/Mrs Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes/Trewarveneth/Newlyn/Penzance' (on a label attached to the frame) oil on canvas 96.5 x 122.5cm (38 x 48 1/4in). For further information on this lot please visit the Bonhams website
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope-Forbes (1859-1912) Canadian/British. "Lure of the Poppies", Naked Figures Hiding in a Field of Poppies, with a Man on a Horse in the distance, Oil on Canvas, Inscribed on a label on the reverse, 18.5" x 13.5".
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope-Forbes (1859-1912) Canadian/British. "Lure of the Poppies", Naked Figures Hiding in a Field of Poppies, with a Man on a Horse in the distance, Oil on Canvas, Inscribed on a label on the reverse, 18.5" x 13.5".
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes, ARWS (Canadian, 1859-1912) 'On the other side of the stile was a whole new world'signed 'EFORBES' (lower left) charcoal, watercolour and bodycolour 55.3 x 34.3cm (21 3/4 x 13 1/2in). The present work is an illustration for 'King Arthur's Wood', a children's book written and illustrated by Forbes for her son. Provenance: The family of the artist. Forbes Studio Sale, Newlyn Orion Benefit, 1981.Private collection, UK.ExhibitedThe Newlyn Art Gallery, Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes. A selection of paintings, drawings and etchings, 30 June - 21 July 1981.Penlee House Gallery and Museum, Poems, Plays and Fairytales, 15 June - 7 September 2013. Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum, Stanhope Forbes, 21 March - 6 June 2015.
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES (1859-1912), CANADIAN/BRITISHLADY IN A BLACK HAT WEARING A JAPANESE KIMONOOil on canvas; signed with initial compounded monogram EAF lower right24 x 20 in — 61 x 50.8 cmProvenance:With Robert Oliver Fine Paintings Prints and Handmade Frames, Montreal, Quebec;This painting was purchased with a grouping of other items in West VancouverNote:Elizabeth Forbes was born in Ottawa in 1859 as the daughter of William Armstrong, an official with the Government of Canada. She travelled to England in the 1870s to study at the South Kensington art schools. In 1878 she returned to Canada to continue her studies at the Art Students League in Toronto. In 1885 she moved to Cornwall where she met her future husband, the artist Stanhope Forbes, whom she married in 1889. Her work was influenced by Whistler and she is particularly known for her paintings of children. Her works rarely appear on the art market.This work may be a self-portrait, circa 1890.Estimate: $1,200—1,800
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES (1859-1912), CANADIAN/BRITISHLADY IN A BLACK HAT WEARING A JAPANESE KIMONOOil on canvas; signed with initial compounded monogram EAF lower right24 x 20 in — 61 x 50.8 cmProvenance:With Robert Oliver Fine Paintings Prints and Handmade Frames, Montreal, Quebec;This painting was purchased with a grouping of other items in West VancouverLiterature:Judith Cook and Melissa Hardie, “Singing from the Walls, The Life and Art of Elizabeth Forbes,” Bristol, 2000.Note:Elizabeth Forbes was born in Ottawa in 1859 as the daughter of William Armstrong, an official with the Government of Canada. She travelled to England in the 1870s to study at the South Kensington art schools. In 1878 she returned to Canada to continue her studies at the Art Students League in Toronto. In 1885 she moved to Cornwall where she met her future husband, the artist Stanhope Forbes, whom she married in 1889. Her work was influenced by Whistler and she is particularly known for her paintings of children. Her works rarely appear on the art market.This work may be a self-portrait, circa 1890.Estimate: $4,000—6,000
Elizabeth Adela Forbes ARWS, Canadian/British 1859-1912- Portrait of a young lady with patterned scarf; watercolour, signed with monogram, 20x12.5cm, (unframed)
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES (1859-1912), CANADIAN/BRITISHLADY IN A BLACK HAT WEARING A JAPANESE KIMONOOil on canvas; signed with initial compounded monogram EAF lower right24 x 20 in — 61 x 50.8 cmProvenance:With Robert Oliver Fine Paintings Prints and Handmade Frames, Montreal, Quebec;This painting was purchased with a grouping of other items in West VancouverLiterature:Judith Cook and Melissa Hardie, “Singing from the Walls, The Life and Art of Elizabeth Forbes,” Bristol, 2000.Note:Elizabeth Forbes was born in Ottawa in 1859 as the daughter of William Armstrong, an official with the Government of Canada. She travelled to England in the 1870s to study at the South Kensington art schools. In 1878 she returned to Canada to continue her studies at the Art Students League in Toronto. In 1885 she moved to Cornwall where she met her future husband, the artist Stanhope Forbes, whom she married in 1889. Her work was influenced by Whistler and she is particularly known for her paintings of children. Her works rarely appear on the art market.This work may be a self-portrait, circa 1890.Estimate: $6,000—9,000
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes, ARWS (Canadian, 1859-1912) First Love First Love signed with monogram (lower left) pastel 88.3 x 58.4cm (34 3/4 x 23in). Footnotes Provenance The Fine Art Society, London, November 1980. Private collection, UK (acquired from the above). Exhibited London, New English Art Club, 1887, no. 2. London, The Fine Art Society, The Rustic Image, Rural Themes in British Painting, 1880-1912, 1979, no. 4 (titled Young Boy with a Rabbit in a Basket). Literature Pall Mall Gazette 'Extra', 1887 (illustrated p. 88). Judith Cook, Melissa Hardie and Christiania Payne, Singing from the Walls, the Life and Art of Elizabeth Forbes, Bristol, 2000, no. 4.88, p. 180 (work is listed as a painting and the subject: 'young man carrying a basket to/from a young woman for whom he has romantic feelings'). 'They have not treated you very well, dearest ...' wrote Stanhope Forbes to his fiancé, Elizabeth Armstrong, on 27 April 1887.υ1 He was referring to the hanging committee of the New English Art Club exhibition which had placed Armstrong's pastel, First Love, 'high up' on the wall. For readers of the Pall Mall Gazette 'Extra', in which it was reproduced, there was no mistaking the picture (fig 1). The consolation for Elizabeth, as Forbes reported, was that looking round the show, this was one of the few pictures that had been sold. Touring the other spring exhibitions with his old student friend, Henry Herbert La Thangue, he reported that Elizabeth had fared rather better in the Society of British Artists where her works were hung at eye level, although his companion questioned why they all were so low in tone. Armstrong at this point was in a dilemma. She was influenced by Whistler, was friendly with Walter and Ellen Sickert, and yet was being pulled ever closer to Forbes and his circle of Newlyn painters.υ2 Despite having moved to Cornwall she was still spending time in London. In 1887 at the New English, and elsewhere, the factions were forming. The members of the club were mostly painters of peasants and fisherfolk based in London, the Home Counties and Cornwall, with some input from leaders of the Glasgow School, and they all revered the rural Naturalism of the Paris Salon, especially that of its master, the recently deceased Jules Bastien-Lepage. In 1887, after their ejection from the British Artists, Whistler's followers, led by Sickert, would infiltrate and eventually capture the club. These painters later declared themselves 'London Impressionists'. However, at this point, all were still speaking to one another, and the formidable force was the emergent Newlyn School in which Forbes was jockeying for leadership. With his eye on success at the Royal Academy, he was increasingly critical of the club and anxious, at the same time, to maintain his relationship with the talented Miss Armstrong to whom he was engaged to be married. While personal relationships and shifting allegiances in London art politics should not be ignored when considering a picture of a country lad with his pet rabbit, what does this important early pastel have to tell us? The picture is highly significant in several ways. Firstly, its subject and style position Armstrong firmly in the New English mainstream.υ3 Placing First Love beside Lepage's Pas Mèche, 1882 or Clausen's Shepherd Boy, 1883 (private collection), there is obvious kinship of subject, palette and format (fig 2). Yet where Lepage's boy is positively aggressive, Armstrong's is all innocence and tenderness – sentiments we find in pictures of children by other club luminaries such as Fred Brown, Walter Osborne and Blandford Fletcher. Secondly, the use of pastel at this point, could in itself be regarded as 'French' and therefore revolutionary. Indeed it would be tempting to assume that Armstrong must have been influenced by Degas's pastels, if the visual evidence did not suggest otherwise.υ4 As Clausen and others had already discovered, the medium was well-suited to on-the-spot observational drawing. Working at close quarters with a model in a country lane, one had to anchor the figure and establish the space around it, avoiding distortion or disproportion. Crucially, Armstrong's boy is observed from a standing position, at close quarters, giving the impression of a direct encounter.υ5 At the same time, in her case, one had to give a sense of movement as the boy carefully reveals the prized pet he has tamed. While all this is far from Degas's dancers and Whistler's light pastel sketches of classical figures, it was thoroughly acceptable in Newlyn, where Armstrong would have found stylish single figure subjects by Edwin Harris, Fred Hall and Chevalier Tayler – some represented on country roads. La Thangue however, wondered why Armstrong's work was so low in tone. Did he not appreciate that the Newlyn painters favoured grey days when light levels were more consistent? Or was he not aware of Whistler's insistence on tonal harmony? La Thangue was of course well aware of both factors, and with a moment's thought he might have conceded that in adding sunshine to her pastel, Armstrong would destroy its resonance, and distract from that object of desire which is the country boy's first love. There would be time for sunny scenes later. For the present, all eyes are on the carefully modelled figure and the quiescent creature in his basket. We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in cataloguing this lot. υ1 Hyman Kreitman Archive, Tate. Elizabeth Knowles, Stanhope Forbes, Father of the Newlyn School, 2017 (Sansom & Co), p. 37, indicates that Elizabeth's work was 'well on the line', quoting the same letter. This mis-reading confuses the New English Art Club exhibition at the Dudley Gallery in Piccadilly, with the Society of British Artists show at Suffolk Street. υ2 Armstrong first became aware of Forbes while in Brittany in 1882, but they did not actually meet until her visit to Newlyn with her mother near the end of 1885; Caroline Fox and Francis Greenacre, Painting in Newlyn 1880-1930, 1985 (Exhibition catalogue, Barbican Art Gallery, London), pp. 77-78. υ3 Cook, Hardie and Payne list this work as a painting and surmise that the 'young man is carrying a basket to a young woman for whom he has romantic feelings'. υ4 Being friendly with the Sickerts must have meant that Armstrong was able to admire the remarkable use of pastel by Degas. Ellen Cobden Sickert had recently purchased Degas's pastel Danceuse Verte, c. 1880 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid). υ5 As in other works of this type, La Thangue's Return from the Fields 1886 (Tate), or Clausen's Stonepickers, 1887 (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne) for instance, the foreground steeply tilts to a high horizon.
ARTIST: Elizabeth Adela Armstrong Stanhope Forbes (New York, United Kingdom, Canada , 1859 - 1912) NAME: Rural Scene MEDIUM: watercolor on paper CONDITION: Excellent. Some age toning. Normal wear to frame. IMAGE SIZE: 13 x 19 inches / 33 x 48 cm FRAME SIZE: 21 x 27 inches / 53 x 68 cm SIGNED: Lower left WARRANTY: 7 days returns accepted if item doesn't match description US Shipping $80 ADDITIONAL HIGH-RESOLUTION PHOTOS
Elizabeth Adela FORBES (1859-1912), Watercolour, Haymaking scene with horse & cart, Unsigned, 20" x 12.5" (50.8cm x 31.7cm, Provenance: From the collection of Robin Hanbury-Tenison, purchased from Phillips of London 10/11/87
Elizabeth Adela FORBES (1859-1912), Watercolour, gouache over black chalk, 'Soft Musice' [sic] - portrait of a young woman playing the lute in an interior setting, Inscribed in pencil on backing board 'The Mellow Voice of Music', Signed, Framed & glazed, 13.75" x 9.5" (35cm x 24.1cm), Literature: Singing From the Walls - The Life and Art of Elizabeth Forbes', by Judith Cook & Melissa Hardie, Published Sansom & Company 2000, pp 142 Illustrated 'The Poems of Herrick'; Exhibited Penlee House Museum & Gallery 'Singing from the Walls 2000'
drypoint etching on thick wove paper, a few light spots, and a little damage to the top edge of the sheet, plate size 200 x 260 mm (7.9 x 10.25 ins), sheet size 324 x 426 mm (12.75 x 16.75 ins) - Quantity (1)
drypoint etching on thick wove paper, a few minor tears to extreme margins, plate size 260 x 203 mm (10.25 x 8 ins), sheet size 418 x 320 mm (16.5 x 12.5 ins) - Quantity (1)
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes (nee Armstrong) (1859-1912) British. "Haystack - Dutch Farmstead", Oil on Artists Board, Signed with Monogram 'EA', and Signed 'E Armstrong', and Inscribed with title in Ink, on the reverse, 6.75" x 9.75".
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES, ARWS (CANADIAN, 1859-1912) Church interior, Brittany signed ‘EA FORBES’ (lower right) oil on canvas 46 x 35.5cm (18 1/8 x 14in).
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES (1859-1912)CONTENTMENTWatercolour and bodycolour with black chalk on paperboard; signed lower left, titled to the nameplate, inscribed “ST.” in black crayon verso, 17.9" x 23.9" — 45.4 x 60.7 cm.Provenance:Alex Fraser Galleries, Vancouver, BC;Private Collection, Canada
Elizabeth Adela FORBES (1859-1912) Black & white etching / drypoint ‘The Pigeons’ – standing figure of a nude holding a bowl with birds at her feet Signed with monogramme within the plate 10” x 5.5” image size (25.4cm x 14cm) wide margins Provenance: part of the Newlyn Orion Benefit Sale 1981 (1 of 3 copies in that sale)
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES (CANADIAN, 1859-1912)YOUNG BOYOIL ON PANEL; SIGNED TOP RIGHT; PARTIALLY SIGNED TO LABEL VERSO10.3" x 8.5" — 25.6 x 21.3 cm.Provenance:Private Collection, CalgaryEstimate: $500—700
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBESYOUNG BOYoil on panelsigned 10.25 ins x 8.5 ins; 25.6 cms x 21.3 cms Provenance:Private Collection, CalgaryEstimate: $1,000–1,200
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBESPROFILE OF A YOUNG GIRLpencil and watercoloursigned with monogramme 14.75 ins x 9.75 ins; 36.9 cms x 24.4 cms Provenance:Masters Gallery, CalgaryPrivate Collection, CalgaryNote:Painted circa 1900.Estimate: $1,000–2,000
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes (nee Armstrong) (1859-1912) British. “Haystack – Dutch Farmstead”, Oil on Artists Board, Signed with Monogram ‘EA’, and Signed ‘E Armstrong’, and Inscribed with title in Ink, on the reverse, 6.75” x 9.75”.
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes (nee Armstrong) (1859-1912) British. "Haystack - Dutch Farmstead", Oil on Artists Board, Signed with Monogram 'EA', and Signed 'E Armstrong', and Inscribed with title in Ink, on the reverse, 6.75" x 9.75".
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes (1859-1912) - Mother and child, watercolour over charcoal on buff paper, signed in pencil lower left, 27 x 22cm (10 5/8 x 8 5/8 in).
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes, A.R.W.S. (1859-1912) Here we are gathering nuts in May signed 'EFORBES' (lower left) black chalk and watercolour and bodycolour, on paper 20 x 28 in. (50.7 x 71.1 cm.)
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES PROFILE OF A YOUNG GIRL, pencil and watercolour; signed with monogram 14.75 ins x 9.75 ins; 36.9 cms x 24.4 cms Provenance: Masters Gallery, Calgary. Private Collection, Calgary. Note: Painted circa 1900.
ELIZABETH ADELA STANHOPE FORBES THE ORCHARD, oil on panel; signed with monogram 12.5 ins x 10.75 ins; 31.3 cms x 26.9 cms Provenance: Sale Victorian and Edwardian Art, Sotheby's London, July 15, 2009, lot 67.Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary.Private Collection, Vancouver.Literature: Judith Cook and Melissa Hardie, Singing from the Walls, The Life and Art of Elizabeth Forbes, Bristol, 2000.Note: Elizabeth Forbes was born in Ottawa in 1859, the daughter of William Armstrong, an official with the Government of Canada. She travelled to England in the 1870s to study at the South Kensington art schools. In 1878 she returned to Canada to continue her studies at the Art Students League in Toronto. In 1885 she moved to Cornwall where she met her future husband, the artist Stanhope Forbes, whom she married in 1889. Her work was influenced by Whistler and she is particularly known for her paintings of children. Her works rarely appear on the art market.
SCHOOL OF ELIZABETH ADELA ARMSTRONG STANHOPE FORBES Canadian, 1859-1912 Laundry Day, depicting two young women washing laundry while a third young woman watches a toddler playing on the kitchen floor. Monogrammed lower left "EAF". Oil on canvas, 19" x 23". Framed.
