A small antique original coastal landscape watercolour painting by Robert Powrie (1843-1922).

Born in Scotland in 1843, Powrie's family emigrated to the USA when he was 13. Robert Powrie joined the Army in the North and served the full 4 years of the US Civil War spending much of his time carving, drawing, painting and as a musician, even making a fiddle. General Grant and Abraham Lincoln who he met were two of his portrait subjects. Marrying in 1866, the couple settled in Fond Du Lac on the southern edge of Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin. A large but shallow lake, with an area of 517sq km, 46km long but a deepest point of just 6.4m. Given the subject of this artwork - a stone cottage with a 'fisherwoman' with ships under sail in the right background and the bleak exposed appearance of the landscape - I suspect the scene may well be near Powrie's home. A Powrie oil painting of Lincoln hangs in the Public Library and a bust he made of General Bragg is in another municipal building.

This painting's frame measures 49cm by 42cm and the visible image 31cm by 22cm. The work is protected behind glass and is in reasonable condition appropriate to age with some spotting - see photos and the frame has a long chip out of it at the top - see photo.

I have found record internationally of two other Robert Powrie paintings, both watercolour portraits. One is of a fisherwoman dressed as in this work but carrying baskets - however the photograph is vague. The other is of a Chinese vendor and I can see the signature is identical to the signature on this painting. The auction was at Bonhams UK in 2008 and the realised price GBP156.

A rare item to become available in NZ, but having said that, this is now my second Powrie work, the other I secured last year. They are identically framed and I believe from the same source.