Melvill and Coghill by Alphonse de Neuville

Posts : 2871 Join date : 2010-06-02

The BBC has an excellent website called "Your Paintings" which features many hundreds of artworks from galleries and museums around the UK. Browsing through the collection for pictures on our subject I came across an interesting mystery. The well known painting by Alphonse de Neuville of Coghill and Melvill saving the colours at Isandhlwana is in the Firing Line collection at Cardiff Castle. But it is also in the collection of the Nairn Museum in Scotland by an "unknown artist"! Both are described as oil paintings and are are virtually the same size. I have raised the issue with the galleries concerned and await a response. One must be a copy!

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Steve

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Posts : 19 Join date : 2011-08-27

I too have an "oil painting" in my collection of Saving the Colours by De Neuville, It is dated from circa 1881 and looks like an original, except that it is an oleograph produced by a chromolithographic process which fell out favour at the end of the 19th Century. It was a type of screen printing on canvas and a popular way of reproducing well known pieces of artwork beginning in the early 1800s. It too is unsigned and on the back of the canvas there a printed is a coat of arms with the inscription 'National Fine Art Association'. It used to hang an officers mess in Dublin and was given to me a few years ago. The oleograph was in dire need of repair. I restored it and if anyone wishes to see before and after pictures please feel free to contact me.

Andy.

Posts : 19 Join date : 2011-08-27

Before restoration

» Alphonse de Neuville's print of 17th Lancers at Ulundi
» Coghill and Melvill issue
» The Death of Lts. Melvill and Coghill at Isandlwana