French School Of The Late 19th Century - The Knight's Farewell

French school after 1890The Knight's FarewellOil on canvas124 x 64 cmA very beautiful painting, romantic and very decorative, both monumental in its composition and moving in its subject, especially since it stands out in a tight frame. The composition is moving and the subject of the painting, the knight's farewell to his beloved, is represented on a background marked by naturalism with its meadow, its flowers, its wood, its river and its very beautiful colors. The painter is from the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century, and he is undoubtedly French as indicated by the mark of the canvas merchant on the back of the frame (the Jules Chauvin house which was active at 33 rue du Dragon in Paris between 1895 and 1937). The style of our painting is romantic, even picturesque. The knight carries the "Reichsadler", the imperial eagle of the Holy Roman Empire and the lady a satchel with various signs including bear paw prints. The style is naturalistic and recalls the English painters of the 1890s inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and Art Nouveau on religious and medieval themes and very close to nature with their settings of meadow, flowers and woods. The English art historian John Christian spoke of the last English Romantics in relation to these painters of the end of the century, Burne-Jones, Stanley Spencer or John William Waterhouse. We find in our painting the motifs of the meadow, flowers, wood and river that we often see in Waterhouse. As for the composition, we think in particular of the English woman painter of Austrian origin Marianne Stokes and her painting "Aucassin and Nicolette" from 1898 (Private collection) which is very close to our painting with the same position of the two characters against each other the head of the lady leaning on the chest of the knight and the hand of the latter held by him on his heart! The dimensions of these two paintings are also very similar (124 x 81 cm).