Exquisite original painting with carefully painted fine detail. Hand signature and title. In excellent condition. 34 x 24 cm.
Painted between the years 1921 and 1934.
Later gilt on wood frame by Infinart of Cape Town is in excellent condition with hand coloured mount. 56 x 47 cm.
Luca Papaluca the elder (1890-1934) was a professional artist based in Naples, Italy. He specialised in the painting of yachts and ships, many of which visited the Bay of Naples.
His larger original works often sell at auction for well over $1000, sometimes much more, and his smaller works sell in the $500 to $1000 range. Prints of his works are also found. He is not to be confused with his son who also painted ships and yachts.
This particular yacht was renamed the Fantome II by the Guiness family when they purchased it in 1921. It had been refurbished as a luxury yacht by its previous owner, the Duke of Westminster. . It kept this name until the family sold the yacht in 1951.
The yacht was originally called the Belem,and has a fascinating history. Amazingly, she is still sailing today, 126 years after she was built!
The Belem was built in 1896 in Nantes. For nearly two decades she crossed the Atlantic transporting a diverse cargo but mostly spices, sugar and cocoa beans from her namesake port of Belém do Pará, on the north-east coast of Brazil bound for France. She would sail upriver on the River Seine to supply the cocoa beans for a Paris-based chocolate-maker.
Belem would later become under the British flag and she became the property of the Duke of Westminster, who converted her to a luxury pleasure yacht. In 1921 she was sold to the Hon. Arthur Ernest Guinness, who renamed her Fantôme II and took part in the Cowes regattas and cruised around the world between 1923 and 1924 with his family.
The painter Luca Papaluca sadly died in 1934 at the young age of 44. This dates the present painting between 1921 and 1934.
The Belem has its own Wikipedia page and there are various references to the yacht on the internet:
1921-1939. Adventure around the world with Ernest Guinness.
In September, 1921, after less than four years of navigation in the colours of the duke of Westminster, the Belem is sold to the Irish brewer Ernest Guinness.
The boat is renamed the Fantôme II (like for his first ship, the Fantôme, Ernest Guinness chose to use the French spelling of phantom to name her. Many English sources made a mistake by calling her the Phantom II).
Various works are made:
- The strapping lad was made longer.
- The interior was reshaped and the decoration redone, a bar was created, a big upright piano installed
- small antannaes of telegraph appears to the top of the mainmast and the foresail mast. The line of sham ports stops before the bow. The carfts, the lower masts and yards are not painted in white any more, life jackets are moored to the balustrade of the back, etc.
Guinness navigated all year long. Of the journeys, we should remember a tour of the world via Panama and Suez from March 29th, 1923 till March 2th, 1924, 31 129 miles:
- Southampton, Sevilla,
- Las Palmas, Saint-Vincent, Trinidad,
- La Guaira - Caracas, Colón, Panamá,
- Galápagos, the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Tonga, Suva-Viti Levu, Salomon, Caroline Islands,
- Shimizu, Osaka, Tien-Tsin, Shangai, Hongkong, Singapour, Penang, Colombo,
- Aden, Port-Saïd, Crete, Gibraltar, Southampton.
During the summer, 1930, Julien Chauvelon, 55-year-old, is invited on board while the Fantôme II made stopover in Nantes. One imagines the surprise of the former captain of the Belem when he discovered the alterations and the luxurious organizations which had considerably modified the aspect of the boat.
In 1937, the Fantôme II is in Montreal, for the celebrations of the coronation of George VI.
In 1939, Ernest Guinness died.
