This is the little original watercolour painted by William Wiehe Collins (1862 - 1951).
It shows a busy street scene in Barcelona. There is a busy gathering on The Rambla in Barcelona, and the artist has concentrated on depicting all the colourful costumes and red and white parasols. Collins excelled at painting these type of busy street scenes.
It is a little study for his illustration published in Cathedral Cities of Spain, published in 1909 by William Heineman. The painting is very close to the published lithograph - but this work on offer here is not a print but the original study for it - you can see all the subtle overlaid brushstrokes on it. It is signed lower left by the artist. I have taken a lot of images so that you can see all the details of the watercolour paint and the texture of the actual paint which you can't replicate.
It is very strange as my watercolour only features the lower section of the published print - perhaps the print was done from two separate studies - or my watercolour has been "cut down" to focus more on the street activities. The painting had been mounted and framed to this smaller size when I acquired it. Other market scenes by Collins seem to also follow this format. I have added an image to my listing of the published lithograph so that you can see what that composition was like. When you look at the back of the board the watercolour is laid down onto - the margins along the top are certainly different to those along each side and the bottom edge - this seems to suggest that the image has indeed been cropped down.
The watercolour has in the distant past been laid down on a backing card (I have left it on there). I have had it reframed recently so that it looks all tip-top for presentation and sale. There was Collin's address and details scribbled on the backboard of its original frame in the artist's hand - which suggests that he had entered it into an exhibtion. I have added images for you here of the back of the old frame - and also with the work out of its frame.
My painting measures a diminutive 14 x 17 cm and has a nice simple oak frame with a fresh acid-free window mount.
HISTORY: William Wiehe Collins was an English architectural and landscape genre painter. Between 1884 and 1885, he studied at the Lambeth School of Art following which he attended the Académie Julian in Paris between 1886 and 1887.
From 1886 he exhibited at a variety of London galleries including the Royal Academy, Royal Society of British Artists (elected 1906) and the Royal Institution (elected 1898).
Collins served in the Dardanelles and Egypt in the Navy during World War I. He travelled widely producing paintings in England, Spain and Italy. He painted widely in England and on the continent, publishing several books on the cathedral cities of England, Italy and Spain. He died in Cossington, Somerset on 16 February 1951.
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