Oil painting entitled 'Conversation Piece: Three Men in 18th Century Costume' by Carl Wilhelm Anton Seiler. Germany, 1890.

An oil painting depicting three men in 18th century costume in an interior with a boarded floor and panelled walls. The two figures in short wigs seated on upholstered armchairs have the air of gentlemen; one holds a three-cornered hat and the other a cane. The third, standing figure in a longer wig is probably a notary; he is rather older, bespectacled, and holds a quill in his mouth, while he ponders a parchment with a seal. Behind him, a desk and a waste basket are prominently littered with papers, and an envelope lies on the floor. At the extreme left is a small table with a candle and a vase containing peacock feathers.

Bequeathed by Henry Louis Florence

Thomas Mc'Lean, art dealer of Haymarket W., London (trade label on reverse of panel); Henry L. Florence, 9 Princes Gate, Haymarket W., London; by whom bequeathed, 1916

Historical significance: A characteristic costume piece depicting figures in eighteenth century costume by a painter who specialised in this genre. For a similar subject see: 1041-1886. As the painter is not known to have visited England, the painting's support of a Windsor & Newton Ltd. prepared panel was presumably exported.

Carl Wilhelm Anton Seiler (1846-1921) was born at Wiesbaden, he studied architecture at the Bauakademie in Berlin and painting with Karl Raupp in Munich. He lived in Berlin, where he taught at the Academy in 1894-95, and in Munich, where he was a honorary member of the Academy from 1890 and a member from 1895. His works are in a number of German collections, and the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff and the National Gallery in Melbourne, as well as the V&A.

During the second half of the nineteenth century the enduring popularity especially of Dutch, Flemish, Spanish and French genre paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fostered a taste throughout Europe both for realist paintings of everyday life and for more idealised historicising 'costume pieces' representing domestic subjects set in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries.

P.48-1917