Several Saturdays back when we took a pleasant early afternoon trip out to Merrickville on a very warm waning-summer day, we poked about at their annual antiques and collectibles show. We're always curious about what can be seen of an intriguing nature that appeals to us as collectors of this and that.

At one booth my husband saw a painting that the vendor advertised as a 19th Century reverse painting on glass in an oval frame that my husband thinks must date to about 1870 or thereabouts. It's a quaint outdoor landscape with variously incorporated architectural points, natural landscape, cultivated gardens and people out for what appears to be a Sunday stroll in pleasant surroundings.

There is the painting hanging on the right, and my husband scrutinizing objects in the booth's interior (black shirt)

Although we saw quite a few objects that were of interest, we did not embark on that trip with the intention of coming away with anything. But my husband relented, because the painting seemed appealing to him, and he bought it from the genial giant of a man selling it, for a reasonable asking price.

Lower left, seated girl, large dog beside her and a girl playing with a hoop, as adults in period garb stroll about.

It took my husband a series of days devoting an hour here or there to the painting and its frame, to clean it up, inspect it, and fully realize that there was a canvas at the back of the frame and this was likely an elderly patrician oil painting on canvas, not a reverse painting on glass. My husband cut out and fitted a thin oval, fitted to cover the back of the frame, and also filled a gap between the frame and the canvas which was firmly adhered to the very thin glass pressed into the frame. Finally, when the painting and its frame were presentable, it was hung.

It's a most interesting painting, very layered, my husband says, with his close painterly eye, but not all that distinct. There is no knowing where it hung for the years that it matured, how it was appreciated, the conditions it suffered if it was neglected. As an acquisition it isn't spectacular, simply interesting and pleasant to look at. And this is how we view it.