Still life with Brass Urn, by Soren Emil Carlsen, oil on canvas, roughly 30 x 34 in. (76 x 86 cm). The image was sourced from a Christie’s auction in 2010, so I assume the original is now in a private collection.
Another mind-bogglingly beautiful still life from the brilliant Danish painter Emil Carlsen, who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
High end auction sites, like Christie’s and Sotheby’s, are some of the few places where I normally trust the fidelity of images of artwork.
But, in this case, my instincts got the better of me and I tried lightening it slightly in an image editor, and the wealth of additional detail and visual appeal that is revealed makes me think the original may look more like the color adjusted photos in the images above (bottom three).
The reason I look to auction sites for as true as possible images of art, is they often deal with patrons who will purchase directly over the internet, based on the image, so the image had better be right. I suppose, however, a client would be more pleased with a painting that arrived looking brighter and clearer then the photograph, rather then the other way around.
A simple but irresistibly compelling composition, sensual texture, almost mystically unified values, and… that bowl!