Wow, Joey from Anonymous Works just snagged this beat-but-incredible little painting on eBay. It's apparently from an unrealized 1944 US Government proposal to build a "triple throne" for His Freshly Re-installed Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.
Signed by an R.O. Marsh, who's not the well-known muralist Reginald Marsh and probably isn't the Panama-based engineer//explorer Richard O. Marsh, either, the style reminds me of Clifford Richard's awesome Noah's Ark, mixed with a bit of Jean deBrunhoff's Babar dining room for the Normandie and the Scalamandre-designed red zebra wallpaper at Gino, the classic Sinatra-era Italian restaurant down the street from our old place in NYC.
Selassie's loss could be your little emperor's gain, though. Even if you're not expert at carving giltwork peacock chairs, this painting would make a fantastic nursery mural.
Proposed Triple Throne In Imperial Palace For Haile Selassie [anonymousworks]
Wow, that really is pretty cool. I wonder why they didn't end up building the triple throne, lol. -mike
I love this wallpaper. It was used as inspiration for Margot's bedroom walls in "The Royal Tenenbaums".