An Interesting English Naïve School Oil on Panel of an Imprisoned Man with Wildcats c.1825-35

SOLD
Origin: English
Period: Early 19thC
Provenance: Unknown
Date: c.1825-35
Height: 11”
Width: 14.5”
Depth: 0.75”

The primitive and naive depiction in oils on thick rough-hewn oak panel, showing a young man in period dress slumped to the floor and detained in a prison cell, with a lion to one flank and with his arm around a tiger to the other. with its young, the tiger licking his face, the whole surviving from the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

The painting remains uncleaned and the rough-hewn oak edges of the panel are on show. There doesn’t appear to be any signature or date marking. It has never been in a frame.

Seemingly the subject here has been jailed and fed to the animals though he seems to have befriended them. We have been unable to find any similar pictures having been sold though further research may prove fruitful.

An intriguing picture, which appeals on many levels, and would be interesting to garner further research on.
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