oil on board, titled verso
mounted, framed and under glass

Provenance: Valued and featured on BBC Antiques Roadshow 2013 Series 35 episode 14 venue Cawdor Castle where the valuation was "I can easily see that making £2000". After the program aired, the BBC received an email from the family of the mother and child depicted. The central text includes ".... drawing by Joseph Herman of a mother and child. My parents lived in South Wales in the late 40’s/early 50’s and knew Herman and his wife well. My father was an artist and worked closely with him. My mother recognised the drawing as it was of herself and first child, my elder brother, a bonny 65 year old now." A copy of the BBC email to the current vendor's family is available to the buyer as is a copy of the email received by the BBC from the son/brother of the mother/child depicted.
Note: Polish-born painter who became a British citizen in 1948. He was born in Warsaw, the son of a Jewish cobbler, and studied at the Warsaw School of Art, 1930–31. In 1938 he moved to Brussels, then in 1940 to Glasgow, where he became a friend of another Polish refugee, Jankel *Adler. He moved to London in 1943, then from 1944 to 1953 lived in the Welsh mining village of Ystradgynlais. Ill health forced him to seek a drier climate and subsequently he lived in London and Suffolk. Herman is best known for his sombre pictures of Welsh miners, with whom he felt a strong affinity. He often showed their black figures silhouetted against the sun: ‘This image of the miners on the bridge against a glowing sky mystified me for years with its mixture of sadness and grandeur. ’ Michael Jacobs and Malcolm Warner write that ‘The harsh realities of life here provided a subject perfectly attuned to his expressionist style of painting. He feels that he has achieved a special empathy with the local inhabitants, and knew that he was accepted by them as soon as they referred to him by the affectionate nickname “Joe bach” (little Joe). Much of his time at Ystradgynlais was spent underground observing the life of the miners’ (The Phaidon Companion to Art and Artists in the British Isles, 1980). Herman made a considerable reputation with his mining scenes and was commissioned to paint a mural for the Festival of Britain in 1951 (Miners, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum, Swansea). In subsequent paintings he depicted the life of other working people he had seen on his extensive travels, which are documented in his book Related Twilights: Notes from an Artist's Diary (1975). He made an impressive collection of African sculpture and his figure style was to some extent based on it. More than one hundred works by Josef Herman are held in UK public collections.