Alfred Downing Fripp (1822-1895) - Ragazza con candela

Alfred Downing Fripp (Bristol, 1822 – London, 1895)
Young with candle
Oil on canvas, cm 45 x 34
With frame, cm 73 x 62
Signed at bottom left: A. Fripp

Alfred Downing Fripp, born in Bristol and trained at the Royal Academy of Arts, was an English painter best known for his watercolours depicting rural life. Grandson of marine painter Nicholas Pocock, brother of painter George Arthur Fripp, and father of the namesake surgeon, he made his debut in 1842 with scenes of Irish and Welsh peasants set in the landscape. In 1844 he was admitted as an associate of the Old Watercolour Society, of which he was an active member from 1846 and secretary from 1870. Left a widower in 1850, he spent four years in Italy, where in Rome he frequented Frederick Leighton and Edward Poynter and turned his attention to studies of young Italian peasants. Returning home in 1854, he resumed British subjects and, after a second and shorter journey in 1859, married Eliza Banister Roe, whose younger brothers often posed for him, as in the case of the famous fisher boy. He particularly loved the landscapes of Dorset around Lulworth.

Signed at the bottom left with the inscription «A. Fripp», the oil on canvas presented here testifies to a less common trial for an artist tied to watercolor. The painting depicts a young woman three-quarter length, wearing a lace-trimmed cap, a brown shawl and a light blouse edged with frills, holding in her left hand a brass candlestick with a small plate and shielding the flame with the other hand. The candlelight, the sole light source, models the smiling face with eyes looking upward, lights the fabric of the dress and makes the figure emerge from a dark, deep background, in line with a nocturnal tradition that recalls 17th-century Northern painting. A gathered and silent image, in which the simplicity of everyday gesture becomes a tale of warmth and waiting.

The frame is provided as a gift, therefore it cannot be a reason for return or complaint.

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