2-982-187 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Best in the Market - a Shop Door in Rome" - painted by Mrs. E. Murray - from the Exhibition of the Society of Female Artists, 1858. 'Mrs. Elizabeth Murray, of Teneriffe, is one of the leading champions of the female artists, and nobly does she sustain their claim to Consideration in the field of graphic art. The compositions are as remarkable for freshness of invention as for successful execution - the one suggesting pleasing poetry and pleasing subjects, the other rigorous and true, full of grace in the contours, and healthy in expression and colour. In "The Best in the Market," we have a simple genre subject, so excellent, however, in its way that it almost seems to be put forth as a challenge to the masculine water-colourist to produce anything better of the kind...the good woman, whose face is rather pretty, and beaming with content and honest pride, is offering her stock...And, certainly, such apples could not well be excelled - so blooming in colour, so round, so well-shaped, their skin so soft, yet so elastic, that they almost make one's mouth water to look at them. Every part of the picture is painted with a firm and delicate pencil, and with a richness and solidity of colour which we do not often see surpassed in the medium (water colours) employed.' From "Illustrated London News", 1858.