Description
Autograph Letter Signed, to Mr.J.Shaw, discussing the dimensions of the painting he has commissioned, and the size of the principal figures. 3 pp. 7 x 4½ inches, in good condition. 27 Oakley Villas, Adelaide Road, 27 November 1857. Henry Le Jeune (1819-1904), historical and genre painter. Le Jeune worked in both oil and watercolour. He exhibited eighty-four pictures at the Royal Academy between 1840 and 1894, and twenty-one at the British Institution between 1842 and 1863. Early in his career Le Jeune painted biblical themes, such as the Liberation of the Slaves (1847), purchased by Prince Albert and now in the Royal Collection at Osborne House, as well as literary themes often drawn from Shakespeare (Prospero and Miranda, 1844) or Spenser (Una and the Lion, 1842). In the 1850s, however, he began to devote himself to genre scenes, especially depictions of children, and it is for these works that Le Jeune gained his greatest measure of fame. [DNB]