Over the moon

July 3, 2012 10:21 AM

My friend wants me to try to recreate this painting as a decoration for her wedding. The problem is that neither of us have any idea who the artist is/where the image came from. Can you help? Also, it would help me out immensely if I had access to a higher quality image to work from.
posted by corn_bread to grab bag (10 answers total)

That's a vintage advertising print. Circa 1910 or so, possibly for champagne. Casual Googling didn't bring up that exact image, but lots similar.
posted by noxetlux at 10:35 AM on July 3, 2012

Looks like a vintage ad, probably turn of the century. This would have most likely been a print, not a painting. If I had to guess, I'd say it's for some kind of liquor. Possibly an aperitif like Fernet-Branca or vermouth or something.

This ad for Rossi has a moon which looks very similar to yours. Maybe it's a more obscure Rossi or Martini & Rossi ad?
posted by Sara C. at 10:36 AM on July 3, 2012

Here's a larger image.
posted by TG_Plackenfatz at 10:39 AM on July 3, 2012

The URL points to a cached image from pinterest. Is this something your friend pinned? If so, can you trace through the pin to find a source image, or tags, or a blog post, or anything else at all, to go on? Or maybe post some of that information here?

Even a tumblr with no source info would be better than the image you linked, because TinEye doesn't know what to do with that URL.
posted by Sara C. at 10:41 AM on July 3, 2012

Here's where it was originally pinned - it says it's a postcard...
posted by julthumbscrew at 10:51 AM on July 3, 2012

This looks like it may be the original Tumblr source, so you may be able to contact her directly and see if she has any more information on its source.
posted by jetlagaddict at 11:03 AM on July 3, 2012

(since it looks like the original is a postcard that won't be very high-res)

I've got mediocre artistic chops, but at camp we'd always make large murals by using a grid technique (example). It's easy enough to tweak proportions for whatever backdrop size we needed. And if an un-talented 14 y.o. can do it, it can't be too difficult.
posted by politikitty at 11:08 AM on July 3, 2012

Based on the cropping, the subject matter, and the level of detail, I'm still not sure it's really a postcard. Especially considering that Tumblr doesn't exactly cite anything or show any real evidence that anything is what she says it is.

Could you turn it into a transparency somehow, and project the image onto a larger surface?
posted by Sara C. at 11:25 AM on July 3, 2012

My one concern with a transparency would be further degradation of the image quality. So while it's slightly less work than the grid method, there's a cost.
posted by politikitty at 12:04 PM on July 3, 2012

Thanks for all the great input! I should be able to recreate the basic proportions and lines - I was looking for higher res to get a better look at some of the details, esp in the woman's face and dress. This has to be on the internets somewhere!
posted by corn_bread at 3:22 PM on July 3, 2012