For as long as I can remember, my grandmother owned a lot of paintings.  For example, she owns Thomas Gainsborough’s  Blue Boy.  However, she owns two paintings by an artist that I am trying to find.

 

Contextually, they go well with the pigs and roosters decorated around my grandmother’s house.  The painting themselves have no titles or dates to them except for a signature.  I should not have a problem tracking this person down since I have a signature, right?  Wrong.

On the first painting

This signature comes from the second painting.  As of now, I am unable to decipher the names from the two paintings.  I know they came from the same person.  According to my grandmother, she acquired them from a very well-traveled man in Florida forty years ago.

So far, I have come up with a few possibilities of how exactly one spells the signature.

J. Juijier

This was a legit last name I found via google.

J. Jeuijiex

I did not find in google.

J. Juijiex

I did not find this in google either.

Interestingly, the artist’s writing style reminds me of the Hebrew Alphabet courtesy of the Jewish Virtual Library.

And who was this person?   Was it by a man or by a woman?  Was this person academically trained?  Was this made during the 1800s or the 1700s?  Or was it made much later?  A painter I found similar in style was a painter named Joseph Quinaux.

The investigation continues on.

Update 10-20-2015:  After my grandmother’s passing, I plan on donating the paintings to a museum.  Also, the Blue Boy?  A reproduction.