Additional Images

Provenance:

Dominion Corinth Galleries Ltd., Ottawa, ON:
Imperial Oil Art Collection:
Joyner Waddington's, Toronto, ON, 6 Dec 2005, lot 22:
Private Collection, Ontario

Note:

In 1887, Peel began studying with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, a French painter best known for his exotic portraits and Orientalist subject matter. Constant’s influence gave Peel’s work a new assurance and worldliness, and would introduce Peel to a subject that would bring him much acclaim: the nude. Peel would exhibit two works at the Salon of 1889, both depicting nude subjects.

One of these, The Modest Model, won an honourable mention, a veritable coup for a young artist. One year later, Peel’s After the Bath, depicting two nude children drying themselves by a fire, would prove to be a major success, receiving critical acclaim and a third-class medal. Female Nude with Floral Wreath comes from this period in Peel’s career, which would unfortunately be around the end of his output, as he died of an infection in 1892, aged 32. At the time of his death, Peel was one of Canada’s best-known painters in Europe, and his depictions of the human body are among his most famous.