Antique English Primitive Oil on Millboard. Depicts two elegantly dressed women walking near a large house with porses in a paddock. 

Overall: 14 X 16 in. 

Sight: 8 1/2 X 10 1/2 in. 

Depth: 2 in. 

#2795 . 

This painting is a curious one, for numerous reasons. First, the label on the back is from Winsor & Newton, and specific details (the Limited, the lion and unicorn logo, and the verbiage below the company name) indicate that the canvas was made between 1882 and 1895. Secondly, the image is a mass of contradictions, as the fence around the farmstead is in the rustic buck-and-rail style ubiquitous to the United States and Canada particularly in frontier times, and the small Halliday-style windmill is the type found throughout the Americas since the 1850s. However, the manor house is in a Tudor Revival style popular from the 1890s onward, and the women, whose garments are wildly out of place for the rural setting, are wearing dresses with enormous upper sleeves and long gloves, feathered hats, and one holds a small parasol, a look almost specifically confined to Britain from 1894 to 1896. The background vista also calls to mind the abundant expanse of the Rockies, or even the small farms that nestle at the foot of the Adirondacks. As there is no visible signature, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint who made the painting or where, but the quality of the board (millboard instead of the cheaper academy board), the Primitive (or “Naïve”) Art style, and these other clues suggest it was painted by a novice artist from an affluent family in the Dominion of Canada (or another British territory) some time in the mid 1890s, either observing a family farm or incorporating various elements from multiple images, or even memory.