STEEL ENGRAVING – “THE VENETIAN FRUIT-SELLER” from the painting by Luke Fildes, engraved by T. Brown, published in 1885.  This engraving is in very good condition.  The actual engraving measures 6 7/8” x 10 1/8”, and is matted to 12” x 16” for easy framing.

   That Venice will ever cease to furnish subjects for the painter’s pencil does not seem more likely as the years roll by, although New York landscapes have been told with great solemnity, and, as it were, ex cathedra, that their business is to paint rather the mill-ponds and goslings of Long Island.  Not to speak of Mr. Samuel Colman and Mr. Sanford R. Gifford as representatives of the earlier school, Mrs. Rhoda Holmes Nicholls, who received one of the ten gold medals at the second-prize fund exhibition of the American Art Association, has produced some of her tenderest tonal effects in scenes similar to the one here engraved; and, as for Mr. Luke Fildes, it has been so profitable to paint Venetian scenes for English picture-buyers that he has made several trips to Venice for the purpose of obtaining materials.  It is not probable that, either in England or in its country, the demand is certain that painters should paint home-subjects will be seriously listened to.  A painter should feel his subject, to be sure, but can he not feel what he sees, wherever he sees it, if to him it has pictorial possibilities?  This picture is a simply presentation of a scene of every-day life on the Grand Canal - the morning visit of the vegetable-man to the area - gate.  Close to his unpretending flat-boat is the handsome gondola of the mansion, against the wall of which the sunshine scintillates.  Mr. Fildes is an English artist, who began his art career by drawings for the London “Graphic” and other periodicals, and illustrated the last books of Dickens and Lever. His first picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868.  His “Casual Ward,” one of the best known of his pictures, was at Philadelphia in 1876.

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