Ponte Sant’Angelo, Rome, Edward Seago; 20 x 30 in. (51 x 77), link is to Bonham’s auction from 2019. I assume it’s currently in a private collection.

Edward Seago, a British painter active in the early to mid 20th century, is one of my favorite landscape painters. I particularly love his brushy, painterly application of paint, as is evident in this view of the famous bridge in Rome.

Two Framed Watercolor Portraits of Children, Ernesto Levorati. Currently in a private collection, images are from Bonham’s past auction from 2024. Bohanam’s gives the sheet size as 12 x 8″ (30 x 20 cm).

I just came across these two delightful watercolor portraits by 19th century Italian artist Ernesto Levorati by chance.

There is a wonderful delicacy to the softly textural applicaiton of watercolor. It appears to me to be in a dry brush technique, of the painstaking kind used for botanical illustration. It’s hard to be sure. It may just be granulating colors.

Whatever the technique, the end result is a soft, visually engaging paint surface that adds to the soft expressions of the subjects.

I don’t know much about Levorati, but I was suprised to see that the pair sold at auction for just a few hundred dollars.