The Assumption of the Virgin After Nicolas Poussin, Dated 1881, French School Oil on Canvas, Framed

The Virgin rises with her arms thrown open, carried by five young angels whose draperies turn around her in a single upward movement. Below them the cloud breaks on a dark plain, and a walled town catches the last light on the horizon.

Oil on canvas, 24 1/2 x 17 inches (62 x 43 cm), 28 3/4 x 20 3/4 inches (73 x 53 cm) framed, unsigned, dated 1881 in red at the lower left, French School, after Nicolas Poussin, in a moulded gilt frame.

The composition follows Poussin's Assumption, with the Virgin standing at the centre of a rising group rather than seated among putti. The angels are painted as adolescents, fully draped in pale yellow, rose and deep green, and the whole upper half is carried on those colours alone. The ground below is kept low and dark, so that the eye is taken straight up.

The handling is careful and even, worked in thin smooth layers with the flesh built in warm glazes. This is the work of a trained hand copying a known composition, which is what a great many nineteenth century French painters did for churches and for private devotion.

The frame is a moulded gilt profile with a plain cove and a fine bead at the sight edge, the gilding rubbed at the corners.

The canvas has not been lined and remains on its original keyed stretcher. There are losses to the paint layer at the left edge, at the lower left below the date, and beside the Virgin's veil.