Neumanns, from Germany, sells on 17 August 2019 a "circa. 1890; signed F. Menehausen" portrait of a Lady, estimated at a very low 20€.
It is a large pastel (69 by 83 cm), well executed and reasonably well preserved (although from the looks of it seriously faded at the bottom?), which should be worth clearly more even as an anonymous but good work.
Once one notices that the second "e" in the sig is perhaps not an "e" but an "s" (compared with the "s" near the end), it becomes quite simple to find the artist. It actually is the work of Frieda Menshausen-Labriola (1861-1939), a relatively important German portrait artist (she has been described as the most important or accomplished female German portrait painter of her time) who lived and worked in Germany and Italy.
While she hasn't been an avant-garde artist, she was clearly a very accomplished portraitist, a good example of the taste and style so appreciated by the bourgeoisie at the time. Her works fetch between 400 and 2000 Euro, and this pastel is probably worth around 600 Euro (it would have been a bit more if not for the discoloriation at the bottom).
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