Unknown – Portrait of an Elderly Woman

Medium: Oil on canvas

Circa 1910, illegible scratched signature

Size: 36x28cm

Conditions: Overall good. framed in openwork stucco gold frame

A beautiful 20th Century oil painting of an Elderly Woman – a masterful, alla prima portrait, painted from life.

Alla prima comes for the Italian meaning “at once” and is a term used to describe a painting executed in a direct and expressive style. From the middle of the 19th Century this method of painting was favoured by great master painters including Paul Cezanne, Monet, John Singer Sargent, and Joaquin Sorolla. This alla prima portrait expresses a skilled hand that even their master contemporaries would have admired.