A Lovely Find

I posted the other day about how my Other Half had tidied the shelves on his side of the bedroom and had culled a whole lot of clutter from the bedroom.  Well, he said he'd left some books he didn't want in a pile at the end of the bed so as I was putting my newly refurbished ottoman there the other day I came across the pile and had a look through.  Whilst doing so I found these three old books which I believe had belonged to a friend of his mother's  who had passed away some years ago.  I suspect by the way they are written that they were from a series written for children.

On looking through the books I noticed that they had some lovely book plates in them.  The books themselves, I think date from the early part of the 20th century or maybe a bit later, there was no indication inside the books.  Some of the plates depicting paintings were beautiful, especially those in a book about Jean Baptiste Greuze, a French artist who I must admit I had never heard of before now, but many of whose paintings now hang in the Louvre in Paris.  My very favourite plate in this book was this one of a painting called  'La Cruche Cassee' or 'The Broken Pitcher'.

 

In another book, there were some very beautiful plates of paintings by Joshua Reynolds, an English artist,  the original paintings of which I believe now hang in the Wallace Collection in Somerset House, the National Gallery and Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.  The painting in the plate pictured below resides in the latter and is called 'Duchess of Devonshire and Child'.

Finally, there was also a book about Mendelssohn,  the German composer, which also had some lovely plates in it by an artist called N M Price.  The paintings in these plates were quite mystical/magical.  I particularly liked this one called 'The Maybells and the Flowers'.  I don't know if you can see from the photo, but each bluebell sits atop of a little fairy face.

How could I throw or even give such beautiful things away before having a chance to fully appreciate them?  Well, I didn't.  We are definitely keeping them and I think I might even read the books and find out a bit more about the artists themselves.  I just wish I had the rest of the collection too.