You did not want to buy it "in its own juice", too bad for you !
Cleaning and re-tensioning revealed the underlying colors and largely closed the cracks. In addition, my relevant remark ( :-) ) below on the painters of Saintonge fed my thinking and I finally found the author : it is Jean-Louis Verdié artist from Périgueux who was a student of Harpignies and who worked from Landes to Charentes and from Périgord to Dordogne at the hinge of two centuries, which we often confuse with are almost homonymous Jean-Louis Verdier older.
I had once had a similar touch and the signature traces of this one are superimposed on that of this one, making my text below obsolete.
I deliver this painting to you as long as I can still climb into my attic where I installed my “wall”, namely a sort of painting library where I stored quality works, but with an illegible, even anonymous signature in waiting for serendipity to make me meet his brother in a catalog, a book or an exhibition, thus allowing me to identify them ... Oh! It still happens to me three or four times a year, sometimes on works acquired 30 years ago, sometimes the previous month. What can I hate people who dare to do that: when they needed money, so as not to be known, they sold the painting but scratching the signature so that, by it, we can not go back to them ... So I bought this table already a few years ago and it still resists me, so I deliver it to you as, "in its own juice" with its cracks and its yellow varnish which n fail to conceal the quality of the work. It makes me think of these painters from Saintonge who, through a brief stay with Courbet and Corot, were durably inspired by them. This young cow sitter who contemplates her herd while spinning wool in a landscape overlooking the sea is very difficult to photograph, so I multiply the images to give you a very little idea of the virtuosity of the touch ... Large decorative format, oil on canvas 63 X 89 cm, mounted in a golden frame 79 X 104 cm. Do not hesitate to ask us by email or telephone for additional information or photos. We have many objects and paintings to restore in our shop in Pau for which we favor the sale on site, preferably in lots! Other photos and many other objects in our shops in Pau and Biarritz and on our site: galerielhoste.com.