Frank Ernest Beresford

Well, I've had, Halliday and 1922, now I have a Frank Ernest Beresford. Messages from the other side!

Anyway, a tatty,
dirty landscape with a 5 cm rent and damaged gilding, purchased for pennies and restored to rude health within 24 hours.

Bertha Müller

Oil on Canvas. A Portrait of a Girl in a Bonnet. Unsigned - auction description - and that was it. Anyway. I liked it, and the one other bidder dropped out after one low bid.
The painting was coated in a thick gloop of glossy varnish. The frame was modern and the back covered in new, brown, paper - it didn't auger well.

Paper removed revealed a 19th century canvas and stretcher bars. There is a signature. Faint, bottom left. Definitely looking up.
Bertha Müller. The first name is relatively legible, Bertha. The second name fades as it nears the the end - of paint on a brush. I thought this was Swedish folk dress, but it's probably Austrian...
The signature enhanced and compared to authenticated signature.

Bertha Müller reframed and finished.

Sabbath Eve and Family Devotions.

I bought this painting from Ebay, entitled 'Sabeth Eve'.
Reverse is written:
(Sabeth Eve) by John H Thompson of Bd
1873
 It has a magnificent, but damaged, frame. The painting has tar deposits and several tears.

A little search engine input - using the accepted spelling of sabbath - revealed Alexander Johnston (1815–1891) as the 'original' artist. The painting, at the Glasgow Museums, is called Family devotions.

Alexander Johnston's painting proved so popular, another version hangs in Leeds Museum and art gallery. 
This one is entitled Sabbath Eve. Spot the difference.
The hungry public bought engravings of the image(by P. Lightfoot) and exhibited at the Royal Academy 1851.

So we have a popular image and a good quality frame. My guess is a middle-class family wanted the painting and commissioned J H Thompson. 

And what of J H Thompson? He was a contemporary of Alexander Johnston and genre painter. John H Thompson 1808 - 1890.

Untitled, 1874.

The proposition.

  

N.B. Genre paintings are unfashionable - don't know why. The social history details they reveal are extraordinary. Completed painting.