I am looking to buy a painting, but before I do, I want to know who the artist is? Can anyone identify this artist or the painting?
Unknown Artist
- Thread starter narijon
- Start date
Red-Coat
Gold Member
Just tidying up some blasts from the past (including some very ancient ones), largely for the benefit of anyone searching the site for information.
It appears to be signed “Serna”, which is ostensibly for a Filipino artist named Serafin Olandes Serna.
However, works said to be from this artist have multiple signature variations (another example below) and appear in such an extreme range of subjects and styles that it’s difficult to believe they are by the same hand. There’s a whole bunch of them here with a very wide price range, and note that one of them is an alternate version of the ‘fisherman’ with a very different brushwork technique, which was claimed to be from 1964 and had a pre-auction estimate of $180-$230:
https://www.invaluable.com/artist/s...gc/sold-at-auction-prices/#ARTIST_DETAIL_INFO
Similar works appear on other art and auction sites too, but no-one has ventured any reliable biographical details for the artist. Some sites simply give his dates as 1895-1985, and some say 1919 -1979. Many of the works are dated within the latter half of those periods.
Putting all of that together, I would say it’s unlikely that an artist with that name ever existed… or that, if he did, he certainly didn’t paint the majority of these pictures. I strongly suspect that they’re commercial studio works produced by a team of artists using the pseudonym ‘Serna’.
It appears to be signed “Serna”, which is ostensibly for a Filipino artist named Serafin Olandes Serna.
However, works said to be from this artist have multiple signature variations (another example below) and appear in such an extreme range of subjects and styles that it’s difficult to believe they are by the same hand. There’s a whole bunch of them here with a very wide price range, and note that one of them is an alternate version of the ‘fisherman’ with a very different brushwork technique, which was claimed to be from 1964 and had a pre-auction estimate of $180-$230:
https://www.invaluable.com/artist/s...gc/sold-at-auction-prices/#ARTIST_DETAIL_INFO
Similar works appear on other art and auction sites too, but no-one has ventured any reliable biographical details for the artist. Some sites simply give his dates as 1895-1985, and some say 1919 -1979. Many of the works are dated within the latter half of those periods.
Putting all of that together, I would say it’s unlikely that an artist with that name ever existed… or that, if he did, he certainly didn’t paint the majority of these pictures. I strongly suspect that they’re commercial studio works produced by a team of artists using the pseudonym ‘Serna’.
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