MARY FEDDEN. CATCHING CRABS. 1987. FOR SALE
MARY FEDDEN FOR SALE. “CATCHING CRABS” 1987.
FOR SALE
Click here for price/further details
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 FOR SALE. CATCHING CRABS. 1987.
Mary was always fond of painting beach scenes and this is a particularly lovely example. The young child in their striped swimming costume is proudly showing off two little live crabs which they have caught. The young child’s mother looks on in adoring fashion, dressed in her stunning pink and white flowery dress. To this idyllic scene, Mary Fedden 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.
Catching crabs 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 painted on a sheet of handmade paper with natural, rough edges. This is very much Mary’s favourite material for her watercolour / gouache paintings. It is very well mounted and framed in a pale wood moulding frame. The painting is in excellent condition throughout with no signs of marks or fading.
MARY FEDDEN. CATCHING CRABS
