James Desvarreux-Larpenteur (1847-1937), Heather Path in Bloom, Signed Oil on Canvas, Late 19th Century, Framed

The heather is at full flower and the painter has let it carry the picture. Rose and purple run up both banks of the track, and everything beyond is drained to blue and cream.

Oil on canvas, 8 x 14 inches (20 x 36 cm), 12 x 17 inches (30 x 43 cm) framed. Signed. French, late nineteenth century, in a period gilt frame.

A sand coloured track climbs on the diagonal between two banks of flowering heather, loose stones scattered across it in the foreground. Beyond, the ground falls away to a screen of trees, then to a hazy valley and a line of blue hills that carry the eye back several miles. The light is even and shadowless, the sky worked in cream and pale blue without a cloud in it. Only the heather is painted in full colour, and the further the eye travels the more the picture gives way to blue.

The frame is a period moulding in three registers, a frieze of scrolls and shells on a lattice ground, two courses of beading and a flat between them, water gilt throughout.

The reverse carries the printed notice of the studio sale held at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on 10 May 1971, the second and last dispersal of the painter's estate, and a period inscription in ink giving a street address and the date 1897.

The canvas has not been relined. There are small losses along the edges, and the frame has a loss at the lower left corner.