EDWARD LADELL 1821-1886      AN ASTONISHING DEGREE OF REALISM

Superb Example of Still Life of Fruits Oil on canvas Painting by renowned English Artist Edward Ladell complete with an exceptional gilt period frame. Signed lower left usual initials EL.

A bunch of black grapes, two ripened peaches, a strawberry and a strand of pale gooseberries all resting on a carved oak bench. 

Condition: Good condition, recently professionally cleaned. Frame re-gilt

Height: (entire including frame) 16.75” (42.5m). Width: (entire) 15.25” (38.5cm).

Shipped to Colwick, Nottinghamshire, England.

Edward Ladell was born in Suffolk in April 1821, the same month that John Constable completed “The Hay Wain” (National Gallery London.)

Ladell’s obituary in The Essex County Standard considered him ‘the foremost man of his day in fruit painting.’ He was entirely self-taught, having initially followed the profession of his father, Christmas Ladell, as a coachbuilder. A native of Colchester, he moved to Torquay and later to Exeter where he took a studio at 20 Queen’s Street. He exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1856 and 1886, and also at the British Institute, the Royal Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street and local West Country venues. Ladell became immensely successful and the finest English still life painter of his generation.
Ladell specialised in still lifes composed of fruit, flowers and a variety of objects including glass, tankards, china vases and bird’s nests. His technique achieved an astonishing degree of realism. Ladell’s paintings are always easily recognisable as he used to use the same articles over and over again on a marble ledge draped with an oriental rug. His work was much sought after and they often ensured flattering notices from the leading representative journals. His biographer Frank Lewis writes: ‘he paints with the fidelity of an old Dutchman and with the brilliancy of colour all of his own. A dead duck lying upon a board, as represented by Mr. Ladell, is a duck indeed...maybe it’s a branch from a raspberry bush laid carefully down, and while the fruit is round and luscious, over-ripe or scarcely ripe, the leaves whether fresh or fading, are represented with a verisimilitude that is marvellous.’
The work of Ladell is represented in the Bristol City Art Gallery, the Colchester and Essex Museum, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Essex, the Harrogate City Art Gallery, the Reading City Art Gallery and the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield.