MARY FEDDEN. CATCHING CRABS. 1987. FOR SALE

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Image size: 7.75” x 9” / 19.5cm x 23cm

Size including frame: 14″ x 16″ / 35.5cm x 41cm

Medium: Gouache on handmade paper

Signed and dated: “Fedden 1987”

Framing: A good, pale oak wooden moulding frame

Provenance: A private collector, London and thence by decent to the previous owner

MARY FEDDEN. CATCHING CRABS. 1987.

Mary was always fond of painting beach scenes and this is a particularly lovely example. The young child in their strippy swimming costume is proudly showing off two little crabs, while their mother looks on in adoring fashion, dressed in her stunning pink flowery dress. To this, Mary has added a beautifully painted seascape in the background, with a steamship on the horizon and the red sign on the beach, a motif she frequently incorporated in her beach scenes.

It is a lovely example of Mary Fedden working in gouache, her favourite medium, alongside oil paint. As Christopher Andreae writes in his book Mary Fedden Enigmas and Variations, “On the whole, her gouaches are small. She has a range of subjects and themes she only paints in gouache. Perhaps the more intimate scale allows for experiment and a degree of fantasy, dreaming or poetry. Her gouaches can be quite free, suggestive and atmospheric.”

Catching crabs is in excellent condition.