Art history meets film history

[strange_complex]

Dear internet,

Does anyone recognise the painting pictured right?

It is a prop in a low-budget film, which appears on screen for only about five seconds and has no role in the plot but is purely a piece of set-dressing. So while it could be an original piece created purely for the film, the odds are that it is either a) a straight copy of a real-world original, or b) a pastiche with readily-identifiable models.

Either way, if anyone can identify the original or the model(s) used to create the pastiche, I'd be very grateful. I am trying to use it to help me figure out exactly when the film is meant to be set, and while I know enough about art to say that a painting like this would have been unlikely before about 1880 or after the First World War, that's about as far as I go.

Full disclosure - the picture is from Hammer's Scars of Dracula, which has no explicit dramatic date, but which I am trying to date from internal clues such as this one. (It's not the only clue I have to go on, but it's the one I need help with.) Sorry the picture isn't particularly brilliant - it is, of course, a cropped screen-cap.

Thank you in advance!



Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.

Comments

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Face looks vaguely Alma-Tadema, pose is more similar to Leighton's "Bath of Psyche" or even Rossetti's "Astarte Syriaca". The execution, however, seems pure '60s kitchen-sink, going on kitsch; kind of Bratby meets Tretchikoff.

BTW, didn't Veronica Carlson paint a fair few pastiche pictures that were used incidentally in Hammer films around that time?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Leighton has definitely provided the background, and meanwhile an FB chum suggests Thomas Armstrong's 'Woman with Lilies' and 'Girl Watching a Tortoise' as likely models for the face / body, which I think both match very well.

Interesting about Veronica Carlson - I knew she was a bit nifty with a paintbrush, but didn't know she'd actually provided pictures for the films. I wonder if she is the artist for this one? Will try to find out!