Watercolor of a Girl Playing a Horn by Charles Brady

I picked this up over the weekend at our monthly antique fair. It is a watercolor on thin paper, about like shopping bag paper. The paper is not watermarked. It has been tacked on the sides and there are some holes from the tacks. It is signed, I think Chas. A Brady. The notation on the back I suspect is incorrect, the work of that artist is nothing like this. There is a stamp from a frame shop and I tried to get a good photo. I think it is says Hulvey Art Shop and the address is on E. 47th St., maybe 815 or 16. I did a few searches and it seemed to come up with stuff in Chicago. I think the painting has an illustrator quality to it and its pretty well done. (There are a few things that are off a bit) I was wondering if maybe it was done by the novelist Charles A Brady, he did do caricatures. Any help with figuring this out would be appreciated.

 

I think that's meant to be a boy, a little page perhaps. And you're right, quite illustrative. With a touch of the pre-Raphaelite about it.

Debora

 

Ditto, a (page) boy. I don't remember the name of the instrument in English, we call it 'schalmei' in Dutch, the French 'chaume'.

 

Think it's called a shawm in English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawm

Debora

 

That's it!
Too many languages playing games in my head.

 

We should all have such problems!

Debora

 

Stylistically I would guess this is from the first decade or two of the 1900s, contemporary with people like Mathew Parrish and Jessie Wilcox Smith. I think that would make it too early for the author from Buffalo, or for the artist indicated on the back (those two being more or less contemporaries). I found a book online from a Charles A Brady who doesn't look like that Buffalo guy. I'm guessing it's not that uncommon a name, even with the initial.