Cobbler by Martin Dichtl 1661-1670

The auction house labelled this oil on canvas as a Victorian genre painting. The back of the painting showed several repair patches. When I removed the painting from its frame, I found the picture was lined in the Victorian period, and since that early restoration the painting had suffered more injuries. Anyway, the original, unlined, canvas had sustained a major trauma. It had a tear from the basket to the cobbler's foot. Nevertheless, someone must have thought a lot of this painting to have gone to so much trouble. I can only think this was when the heavy-handed over-painting occurred - with a job lot of lead white the artist added dashing highlights and gave the cobbler a cyclist's helmet! The image below is after initial cleaning, and what I thought was a fireplace, emerged from the grime, as a box-bed.

Christie's, London, sold on Wednesday, September 14, 2005, a painting of cobbler in his workshop. The painting is almost identical to mine except for the colour and the right of the picture is cropped on mine. The auction labelled the painting as a follower of Martin Dichtl 1661-1670 (Germany).

1830's woman in a yellow dress

This portrait is most probably French. The wedges or keys are rounded; British keys tend to be angled. She's a young woman wearing a chatelaine showing she is the most important woman of the house.

I lined the canvas - the original was extremely brittle. Filled in any holes and scars with putty and then cleaned the painting.

I found the perfect frame for her, which needs a little TLC and plaster mould making ...

The chatelaine was also used as a woman's key-chain in the 19th century to show the status of women in a household. The woman with the keys to all the many desks, chest of drawers, food hampers, pantries, storage containers, and many other locked cabinets was "the woman of the household". As such, she was the one who would direct the servants, housemaids, cooks and delivery servicemen and would open or lock the access to the valuables of the house, possessing total authority over who had access to what. Frequently, this hostess was the senior woman of the house. When a woman married and moved into her father-in-law's house, her husband's mother would usually hold on to the keys. However, if the mother became a widow, the keys and their responsibilities and status were often passed to the oldest son's wife. Younger women and daughters in the house often wanted the appearance of this responsibility, and would often wear decorative chatelaines with a variety of small objects in the place of keys, especially bright and glittering objects that could be used to start a conversation. In the case of the absence of a woman of the house, the controller of the keys was often a hired housekeeper.

And here she is finished- finally. 8th March 2019.