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‘By Morning Sunlight’

Oil on canvas
14″ x 12″

Signed in monogram

Alfred Provis
British 1843 – 1886

Alfred Provis was a painter of domestic genre, who exhibited at the Royal Academy, from 1846 – 1876, as well as exhibiting at Suffolk Street, British Institution and various other venues.

He specialised in small, detailed interiors of cottages and farmhouses, with women and children performing their household chores. His pictures are usually small and predominantly brown in colour, his style and subject matter shows great affinity to that of Thomas Webster and the Cranbrook Colony of artists.

By Morning Lightis a fine example of Alfred Provis’s work and illustrates the artist’s observation and great attention to detail, in his paintings. Provis’s palette of luminous browns abandons the ‘principal’ for a less, narrow solution of light and a freer analysis, drawing the viewer’s eye all around the whole of his canvas. The scene takes place in a typical rustic cottage of the time, it is furnished with oak country furniture, pots and pans hang from the rafters, and a couple of bonnets and a purse neatly hang on hooks. The young woman is the focal point of the painting – she is pensively reading a letter, illuminated by the morning sunlight, as it streams in from the only window. A covered birdcage sits on the table, waiting for its cloth to be removed, once the young woman has perused her letter. It’s a simple cottage, but tidy and homely, potted plants sit tidily on the windowsill and the family cat watches from the comfort of a rush-seated chair. It’s a scene of quiet solitude, of a time gone by, when the pace of life was far slower, but not perhaps always as idyllic as these charming ‘cottage interiors’ portray.

© Sutcliffe Galleries 2019


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