Recent Arrivals

Insights into historic American artwork newly available from galleries and dealers around the country

David Gilmore Blythe (1815-1865)
The Cobbler’s Shop

David Gilmore Blythe is one of a handful of American painters of genre scenes active before the Civil War whose work had both social significance and real artistic character. He worked in Pittsburgh which was a city with a large working class population with whom he identified. The Cobbler’s Shop, a recent acquisition of Thomas Colville Fine Art, depicts a destitute man seeking the repair of perhaps his only pair of shoes from a cobbler whose family apprehensively stand behind the opening door—they are not expecting good news to arrive. Blythe captures this moment of pathos in a manner that is not a caricature but a sympathetic evocation of their shared anxiety.

Joseph Decker (1853-1924)
Pears on a Branch

Joseph Decker, a native of Brooklyn, New York, studied in Munich, Germany, and traveled back there at least once after returning to Brooklyn during the course of his career. This work, found in a German private collection, was purchased by Thomas Colville Fine Art in Munich. It is one of a small group of highly detailed works by Decker painted around 1885, of fruit growing in nature in a style that all but anticipates the photorealism of the 20th-century. “There is nothing like them in this period on either side of the Atlantic,” says Colville. “Critics derided this approach as ‘too photographic’ to be considered art and Decker reacted by changing to a more painterly style for the rest of his career. There are not more than eight or 10 of these tightly painted works by him known today and the largest, and most ambitious example, also of plumbs on a branch, is on view in The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Benjamin West (1738-1820)
Master Copley And His Elder Sister

This work, recently obtained by Thomas Colville Fine Art, depicts two young children seated closely together with a gameboard on a table in front of them. The girl wears a dress with sash and a wide-brimmed hat with ribbon and bow; the boy wears his hair in long bangs and is looking at the game pieces on the table. The crest rail of a chair is partially visible behind him to the right. The sister is Elizabeth (Betsy) Copley (1770–1866), John Singleton Copley’s eldest child who later married Gardiner Greene of Boston. Next to her sits her younger brother, John Singleton Copley, Jr. (1772–1863), who as an adult remained in England, becoming the first Baron of Lyndhurst. In this drawing, Betsy appears to be wearing the same dress she wears in John Singleton Copley’s large group portrait, The Copley Family, ca. 1776-77, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Thomas Colville Fine Art
111 Old Quarry Road • Guilford, CT 06437
(203) 453-2449 • tlc@thomascolville.com
www.thomascolville.com