Hand-Painted Hand-Signed Pastoral Landscape Ceramic Tile by Charles Greeley

This is a large, square ceramic tile featuring an original hand-painted pastoral landscape. The scene depicts a prominent deciduous tree, likely a weeping willow or oak, standing in a sunlit meadow bordered by a rustic wooden fence and rolling forested hills in the background. Two small figures, appearing to be a man and a woman in mid-20th-century attire, are visible in the middle ground. The artwork uses a soft, impressionistic color palette dominated by greens, ochre, and earthy browns. It is hand-signed in the lower-left corner as 'Charles Greeley'. The tile itself is thick with a white unpainted border framing the central image. Condition issues are significant and highly visible: there is a large area of surface loss and chips in the upper-right corner that has been crudely patched or remains as exposed white ceramic body. Additional surface wear and minor scuffing are evident across the glaze, and the edges show some small nicks. The style suggests an American mid-century folk or decorative art piece, likely dating from the 1940s to 1960s. The brushwork shows a degree of trained technique, particularly in the rendering of light on the meadow and the texture of the tree canopy.