Elstir en Famille, Original Oil on Canvas by Ramon Dilley, Signed and Dated 1973

Four figures stand close together against a ground of mottled olive and brown, with no setting given beyond the paint itself. At the left a woman in a tall pale hat rests her hands on her hips, a small cross on a chain at her throat and lace at her collar. Beside her a second woman wears a wide dark hat tipped forward, her coat black over a pale patterned skirt.

A child stands in front of them in a straw coloured bonnet tied with a bow, wrapped in a cream coat edged with yellow. At the right a man in a yellow straw boater turns toward the group, a pale scarf at his neck, a walking stick in one hand and grey blue trousers below a brown coat. The dress belongs to the years around 1900.

The paint is dragged and scrubbed rather than blended, and the colour stays muted throughout, sand and olive and grey with pale accents laid on top.

Signed and dated at the upper right, the canvas is countersigned on the reverse and titled Elstir en Famille, after the painter invented by Marcel Proust in In Search of Lost Time. It is presented in a gilt frame with a linen slip.