Lot 135: Sarah Henrietta Purser HRHA (1848-1943) A GROUP KNITTING, c.1882

Sarah Henrietta Purser HRHA (1848-1943) A GROUP KNITTING, c.1882
oil on canvas
41 by 51cm., 16 by 20in.
This previously unrecorded painting of an institutional interior with a knitting and social group of varied social rank is characteristic of Sarah Purser's early work in handling, tone and colour, (though one head is retouched.) Masterly effects in the glinting spectacles, hands, steel needles and windowsill plant typify Purser. The subject echoes her 1879 RHA oil exhibit, Turning The Heel, and 1883 drawings of her mother sewing and a lady knitting, while the woman with a red shawl posed again for Across The Rocks, an oil shown at the 1882 RHA, all illustrated in The Life and Work of Sarah Purser, 1996.

(Perhaps Purser herself retouched a damaged area.)

Dr. John O'Grady, author of The Life and Work of Sarah Purser, 1996.

April, 2010