Lot 20: Henry Treffry Dunn 1838-1897 , girl with a psaltery oil on panel

oil on panel

measurements note 67 by 43 cm., 26 1/2 by 17 in.

The Cornish artist Henry Treffry Dunn worked as Dante Gabriel Rossetti's personal secretary and studio assistant in Rossetti's later years at Tudor House in Chelsea. He completed some of Rossetti's unfinished works, painted replicas of paintings for commissions that Rossetti himself was not able to complete and also painted a number of paintings in Rossetti's style. The present picture is very close in style to a series of panels painted for the casement of a remarkable folding bed painted for Theodore Watts Dunton's House, The Pines in Putney (now at Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton). Girl with a Psaltery relates to Rossetti's chalk drawing entitled Forced Music (also known as Violante) although in Rossetti's composition, the model, said to have been Watts Dunton's mistress, is nude.