Portrait of Mrs Shine

Artist Antonio Mancini (1852 - 1930)

Date1907

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsFramed: 155 x 125 x 10 cm
141 x 109 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Lane Bequest, 1913.

Object number143

DescriptionThis portrait of Ruth Shine, Hugh Lane's sister, is one of twelve paintings by Mancini which Lane donated to the gallery. Ruth Lane was the only surviving girl of the eight children born to the Lane family. In 1905 she married James Hickman Shine, J.P., of Ballynacreese, Co. Limerick. She was widowed in 1912 and late in life she married Capt. T.C. Heaven. She outlived all her brothers and died in 1959.

Mancini's unusual working technique, was to set up a frame in front of the sitter onto which he pinned threads crossing one another and a similar grid was placed very close to the canvas. Mancini painted through this grid and in the areas where the paint was very thickly applied the surface is marked by the threads.

This grid technique is clearly visible in the 'Portrait of Mrs Shine'. This work is richly painted, with particularly deep impasto, suggesting the texture of lace on her dress. In contrast the paint is smoothly applied in the area of the face and no grid marks are visible.

Mancini wanted to place Mrs Shine against the background of an orange tree and Thomas Bodkin describes how this background was composed of laurel branches onto which he hung oranges with pieces of string. Adding to this Mediterranean background is a classical portrait bust which, while marking the formal nature of the portrait, serves as a contrast to the gentle feminity of the sitter. Below this is a green Chinese ceramic seat, one of a pair still in the Gallery's collection.

This image is typical of Mancin's heavy impasto technique for which Hugh Lane provided the materials. As Lane was known to be somewhat parsimonious, it was rumoured that he returned to the gallery in the evening to scrape off some of this paint and return it to the palette, for the artist to use the next day!

(Extract from 'Images and Insights', Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1993, p. 224)

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