Featured Arabic paintings

And now that I'm looking --the labels are screaming "modern print process here" -- all the edges are so clean. Plus, even the gluing and the cropping looks wrong.

But I didn't notice it before so maybe I'm seeing what I expect to see.

Here's another with a different address "OL"...

 

The National Portrait Gallery has a directory of British picture framemakers. See under John Harris here:
https://www.npg.org.uk/research/conservation/directory-of-british-framemakers/h/

I wonder if the NPG has a photo of an original Biggs label.

Every example of the label that I have found online says 3L. (didn't see jivvy's)

 

I've been looking for an original and have not found one. I did find a piece of interest (or so I thought). (I believe this one is an actual original print, but I'm not swearing to anything at this stage.)

I believe (from looking old business directories on google ebooks) that this Biggs & Sons was a completely separate company (a maker of "educational works and appliances")...

If it this company IS completely unrelated to the framers... well, the similarities in the labeling style are... interesting.

 

Look at this Biggs & Sons framed "antique" painting. Clearly the work of a Chinese factory.

https://www.chairish.com/product/11...f-a-seafaring-ship-in-carved-biggs-sons-frame

Debora

 

At this stage, everything I look at is... suspect... and it's not just Biggs & Sons... well, check out this search on etsy and look at the backs.

https://www.etsy.com/market/carvers_gilders

Here's an example:

 

From the link @Debora posted:

 

I haven't found original labels, but here is the book one would want, I think:

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22797077459

The London Furniture Makers. From the Restoration to the Victorian Era 1660 - 1840. A record of 2500 cabinet-makers, upholsterers, carvers and gilders with their addresses and working dates illustrated by 165 reproductions of makers` trade-cards. With a chapter by R. W. Symonds on the problem of identification of the furniture they produced illustrated by some hitherto unpublished examples of authenticated pieces. Text: englisch.

Heal, Sir Ambrose:

Published by New York, Dover Publications., (1972)

ISBN 10: 0486229033 ISBN 13: 9780486229034

 

So, in answer to the original question... it appears you have "antique" factory paintings from China. The value would be decorative.

Debora

 

After clicking on a link to this in the more recent horse-painting inquiry I started digging a bit for information about Biggs & Sons. I am not at all disputing the consensus that these are factory paintings, but I wondered if there was more information about the creators of such. I found this blurb in an 1868 newspaper, so if the frame is not real, the label may have been created from that of these 'carvers and gilders.'

 

Whenever I see those large, bulky, new looking frames made to look antique, I rarely bother to even look at the painting inside anymore. It's become obvious to me that these are copies. It is more difficult to perceive without the frames.