Birds & Animals (SOLD)

Signed and dated l.l.: Ann Baring delt 1789, watercolour over pencil on laid paper watermarked with the Strasburg Lily34.8 x 47.9 cm; 13 5/8 x 18 7/8 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K., until 2019This charming work shows Ann Baring’s watercolour style as similar to that of her fellow Devonian Francis Towne and she may be presumed to have been one of his pupils. The watercolour shows several similarities to Towne’s work, especially the trees in shade immediately above the white cow, and the figure and his donkey crossing the bridge. This would appear to be a composition drawn from elements learned from Towne. The strong shadow cast by the tree trunk in the right, and the fussy foreground plants in the bottom right corner are also characteristic of this kind of Towne. She is also known to have painted oils.Ann Baring, who lived in Devon all her life, was the daughter of John Baring, (1730-1816) of Mount Radford House, Devon, an English merchant banker and M.P. and the eldest son of Johann Baring (1697–1748), a clothier from Bremen in Germany who had settled in Exeter, where he built up a large business and obtained English citizenship. Her mother was Ann Parker, the daughter of Francis Parker of Blagdon near Paignton in Devon. She is known to have worked in Ireland as well as Devon. A Miss Baring commissioned a watercolour from Towne of Lago Maggiore in 1781 (Tate Gallery, Francis Towne online catalogue FT 350).After John Baring’s father's death in 1748, he inherited the large family cloth business in Exeter. Together with his younger brother Francis, he extended his commercial interests to London and set up the partnership of John and Francis Baring, of which he was the senior partner. He soon retired from activity in London for Devon and left the running of the London business to Francis, under whose guidance it evolved into Barings Bank. In 1802, Barings and Hope & Co. were called on to facilitate the largest land purchase in history, the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the area of the USA.John Baring founded banks in Plymouth and Exeter and was elected Member of Parliament for Exeter in 1776. He was also appointed Sheriff of Devon for 1776. He retired from Parliament in 1802. His daughter Ann had three sisters, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Margaret and two brothers.The Baring daughters and their cousins were prominent in Exeter society and were known in the circle that included Towne’s friends and customers. In 1786 Ann’s sister Charlotte married John Short of Bickham, one of Towne’s patrons (see FT240), and in 1790 Frances, daughter of Charles Baring, married William (see FT876), the son of Towne’s musician friend William Jackson, whose house, Cowley Place, was very near to Barton Place. In 1791 Frances’s sister Jaquetta married Sir Stafford Northcote of Pynes, another nearby estate where Towne had sketched (FT143). Charles Baring’s daughter Lucy was a close friend of Frances, daughter of John Merivale, Towne’s major patron, and after Lucy’s death in 1815 Frances married her widower, John Lewis Mallet of the Audit Office.I am grateful to Richard Stephens for his comments on this watercolour.

Signed l.l.: Charles D’Oyly, watercolour over pencil18 x 15.5 cmThe interior of the artist’s house at Patna is illustrated in two watercolours dated 1824 in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, nos. 2019 and 2020 which show that D’Oyly’s house was a busy place, full of visitors and dogs.The present work, which relates to the Yale drawings, depicts details of the interior with a colonial sofa, a table, wall lights and a heavy curtain at the French window, as well as a travel book propped against the wall and a framed marine painting. A lush garden with palm trees can be glimpsed in the distance through the open window.D’Oyly and his second wife Elizabeth Jane Ross moved to Patna in Bihar in 1821 when he became Opium Agent for the East India Company. Their house at Bankipore, a suburb of Patna, was a focus of artistic activity, and Elizabeth also painted as well as being a musician.

Watercolour with touches of bodycolour6.5 x 8 cmLady Emily Dundas, née Reynolds-Moreton, was the fourth daughter of Thomas, 1st Earl of Ducie and sister of Augusta Raymond-Barker’s stepmother Lady Catherine Reynolds-Moreton, who married John Raymond-Barker in 1841 as his second wife. In 1847 she married Admiral Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas, G CB (1785–1862) as his second wife. He became the First Naval Lord in the first Russell ministry in July 1847 and they lived at Admiralty House. Thackeray records that during the 1850 season Lady Emily Dundas gave a party at which anyone who was anyone would wish to be seen (Jerry White, London in the Nineteenth Century – ‘A Human Awful Wonder of God’, 2007).Provenance: Augusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park, Gloucestershire; thence by family descent until 2016

Pencil and washes, in its original early 19th century frame with acanthus leaves at the corners33 x 22.1 cm; 13 x 8 ¾ inchesProvenance: Miss Elizabeth Broadwood, Canterbury, by descent; Colt Clavier Collection, Bethersden, Kent, until 2018.Literature: David Wainwright, 'Broadwood by Appointment: A History', 1985, ill. facing p. 185.This portrait of Thomas Broadwood shows him as a young man of leisure. He was the second surviving son of John Broadwood, and the third generation of the piano manufacturers John Broadwood & Sons, who made upright and grand pianos, where he worked as business manager of the company. He met Beethoven as a young man in 1818 and sent him a newly improved triple stringed piano (which subsequently belonged to Liszt and is now in the National Museum in Budapest). Thomas Broadwood purchased the Holmbush estate in Lower Beeding, Sussex, in 1824–1825, and employed Francis Edwards to design a two-storey castellated mansion with octagonal turrets. He grew dahlias in the gardens, which were highly fashionable in the 1820s and 1830s. Broadwood was High Sheriff of Sussex in 1833. Edridge’s work can be found in the collections of Britain’s major museums.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: E F Green Poonah 1847, oil on canvas76.9 x 63.8 cm; 30 ¼ x 25 1/8 inchesProvenanceChristie’s, London, 5 June 1996, lot 140;Private collection, ScandinaviaExhibitedRoyal Academy, 1851, no. 446In this evocative image, the snake charmer holds a pungi. His assistant has a python draped around him and a mongoose, commonly included in snake charmers’ performances, is tied up in the corner of the composition. A third snake slithers in the foreground. They are standing in a landscape with a fort on a hill in the middle distance, with mountains beyond. Green, while not known for his topographical accuracy, seems to have captured the hilly landscape around Poona, and the building on the rocky outcrop in the present work may be loosely based on the Maratha Hill Fort at Purandhar. The temples may be inspired by the Temples of Parvati at Poona.Snake charmingSnake charming, as it exists today, is thought to have originated in India, and Hinduism has long revered serpents, particularly cobras, as sacred creatures. Originally snake charmers may have been healers, who were able to treat snake bites. Some learned how to handle snakes and could be called upon to remove snakes from places where they were not wanted. They were a familiar sight of Indian street life until the 1970s when the practise was outlawed. The ubiquitous controlled battle between a mongoose, immune to snake venom, and a cobra usually saw the snake charmer handle the lithe mongoose on a rope so that it didn’t kill the cobra.The pungi or tiktiri is an Indian wind instrument consisting of two reed pipes glued together and inserted into the thick end of a gourd – the hollow, dried shell of a fruit in the Cucurbitaceae family of plants, which includes melons, cucumbers and squashes. The mouthpiece is at the narrower end of the gourd. One of the pipes is a drone playing a single note, while the other plays the melody, with fingerholes that can be adjusted with wax to vary the pitch. They are often brightly painted. It is the traditional instrument used by snake charmers to control the snake by movement, as while snakes can sense sound, they cannot hear music.Edward F. GreenThe artist was the fifth son of John Green, a merchant in the Levant and his wife, Harriet. The Green family were prominent members of The Levant Company and the Maltese Consular Service. Edward Green’s dates have been incorrectly recorded, but family records indicate he was born on 11 January 1801, baptised on 14 July 1801 at St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, London, and died in 1884.Green studied at the prestigious Royal Academy Schools in London, where his name appears in the records as Frederick Edward Green / E.F. Green. He was admitted as a probationary student on 11 January 1822, and registered as a full student on 4 April 1822, aged 21, for painting. Green was admitted to the life drawing school on 29 November 1822. He excelled at the Schools and won a silver medal in 1826, for a copy made in the painting school.The artist married Catherine Colona Stilon in Malta on 2 June 1840 and a daughter, Melita (Kate) was born to the couple on 30 April 1841. They had a second daughter Ellen Green. His brother, James Moring Green (the seventh son), was also an artist and Vice Consul of Naples. Two of his other brothers were Consul and Vice-Consul in Greece and this no doubt lies behind the number of interesting paintings he made of Greek subjects.After his wife’s death in 1845, Edward F. Green sold all his paintings, copies of Old Masters and curiosities at an auction by Foster Auctioneers, 54 Pall Mall (which was advertised in ‘The Atheneum’) and travelled to India. He is recorded as having lived in Bombay, now Mumbai, and evidently travelled in the surrounding area, and possibly, further afield. He stayed in India for three years, returning to Malta in 1848 for the funeral of his father-in-law, Dr Guiseppe Stilon, a Royal Naval Surgeon of Italian origin (whose will is in the National Archives, Kew).Green’s motivation to visit India is not known but it seems likely that it was influenced by the loss of his wife. Little is known about Green’s soujourn there, but he was an artist with a taste for travel and a journey to India would have appeared exciting and begun a new chapter in his life. British artists had been visiting India since William Hodges’ arrival in 1780 and the activities of the East India Company and the increased number of permanent British residents created a market for pictures both in India and the United Kingdom. With his eye for local customs and costumes, Green would have found a ready supply of colourful subjects to paint.Exhibition HistoryGreen exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, showing 14 works between 1824 – 1851. He also showed 21 works at the British Institution and exhibited at the Society of British Artists. The artist specialised in exotic and orientalist subjects inspired by his extensive travels in Italy, Greece, Albania, Persia and India, and he specialised in painting particularly evocative oils by highlighting details of local costume and customs. His portrait of a Greek girl in a landscape wearing a Greek costume and embroideries was illustrated as a colour plate in Fani Maria Tsigakou, The Rediscovery of Greece, 1981, col. Pl. V, p. 194. He also worked as a portrait painter, a ready source of income, and in 1830 painted the portrait of Major-General Sir Robert Henry Dick (1785? – 1846), the soldier who lived in India. This was engraved as a mezzotint by Henry Haig circa 1847. A portrait of a young man by Green is in the collection of the Guildhall Art Gallery.His various addresses are recorded as 13 New Bond Street in 1824; at 65 Upper Charlotte Street in 1826; at 16 Howland Street in 1828 and 1829; at Upper Gloucester Place in 1837; all in London, at Strada Mercante in Valletta, Malta in 1840 and 1841; at 2 Titchfield Terrace in St. John's Wood in 1843; in Bombay, India in 1846 and at 17 Nottingham Street, London in 1851.Poona (Pune), MaharashtraPoona (now Pune) in Maharashtra was one of the major military bases of the British East India Company from 1818 after the fall of Peshwa during the third Anglo-Maratha War. A large military cantonment was built to the east of the city. Due to its milder climate, it was the monsoon capital for Bombay, situated almost two thousand feet up in the Western Ghats. It was one of the most important cities of the Bombay Presidency established in 1858 when India came under direct British rule.Poona had long been a place which British artists visited, from Thomas and William Daniell and James Wales in 1780s and 1790s. Wales founded an art school for local painters in the city in 1791 with the help of Sir Charles Ware Malet, British Resident at the Peshwa’s court, although the school ceased to exist after his death in 1795. William Carpenter (1818 – 1899) was in Poona around the same time as Edward Green and drew many watercolours of the city, its inhabitants and the surrounding area. William Simpson (1823 – 1899) also visited Poona towards the end of his time in India, once the railway had been extended there in 1858.

Signed l.c.: Howitt, pen and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil13 x 18.3 cmThe artist, who married the sister of Thomas Rowlandson, is acclaimed for his country subjects. His animal sketches were frequently done from life.Provenance: Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven (1800– 1973)Henry Rogers Broughton succeeded his older brother, Urban Huttlestone Broughton, as 2nd Baron Fairhaven in 1966. He was born in the United States and was educated at Harrow before joining the Royal Horse Guards in 1920. Both brothers were great collectors, and Henry put together one of the largest twentieth-century collections of paintings, drawings, gouaches and miniatures. He left a large bequest of 120 flower paintings, over 900 watercolours and drawings and 44 volumes of drawings by botanical artists such as Redouté and Ehret to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge – the Broughton Bequest.

KT399Pencil, with sketches verso of a wolf and a woman’s body with the head of a pig11.2 x 18 cm; 4 3/8 x 7 inchesFramed size 22 x 27 cm; 8 5/8 x 10 5/8 inchesProvenance: Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd, no. 24553 (called an Eastern Sheep)The subject of the sketch verso is as yet unidentified.

Inscribed l.c.: stuff: spec:, pencil11.5 x 18.2 cmProvenanceThomas Agnew & Sons Ltd, no. 23392;John and Carolyn Sergeant, until 2017

Watercolour on buff paper heightened with white, in the original frame with exhibition labels attached16 x 9.5 cm.; 6 ¾ x 7 ½ inchesFrame size 27 x 19 cm.; 10 ½ x 7 ½ inchesProvenanceThe Fine Art Society;J.T. Bennett-PoeMarks’ earlier works were usually historical and literary, especially Shakespearian and sometimes humorous. However, he became increasingly interested in painting birds and this body of work was highly praised by John Ruskin. Marks had three exhibitions in six years at the Fine Art Society in London, the first of which was Birds in Bond Street in 1889. He was a frequent visitor to London Zoo where he was frequently approached by other curious visitors . He wrote in his preface to the 1890 catalogue: “The most common remark I hear is, “Ah pretty creature! Don’t he seem to know he’s sitting for his picture?” and concluded “… I hope I may be excused, and not held too eccentric, in preferring to converse with a parrot for one hour, rather than with a politician for two”. The Victoria and Albert Museum have a holding of his work.The artist was born in London, the fourth child of John Isaac Marks, a solicitor. He studied in London at the Royal Academy Schools and later in Paris. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere from 1853. He was elected ARA in 1870 and became a full RA in 1878.

Signed l.r.: George Morland, pencil, on paper watermarked J WHATMAN 46.1 x 30 cm; 18 x 11¾ inchesProvenance: Andrew Wyld, London; The Flannery collection, UK, and by descent until 2018.Engraved: As a sheet from sketchbook IX, in crayon-manner (probably by John Harris), published in London by John Harris, 28 Gerrard Street, Soho, 1 September 1794 (50.5 x 34.5 cm; 19⅞ x 13⅝ inches).Morland published sketchbooks which were intended to instruct beginners in drawing, and he made sketches especially for this purpose. They were very popular and many were published as soft-ground etchings from 1792 to 1807, originally as four large folio sheets between blue paper covers. He collaborated with John Harris on sketchbooks I–XVII between 1792 and 1795.Unauthorised sketchbooks then began to be published, to Morland’s irritation, some using drawings he had not approved for publication, others with drawings in his style or after his work. He resorted to publishing denouncements of the rogue works in The Times and other newspapers.For a detailed account of prints after Morland, see Francis Buckley, ‘George Morland’s Sketch Books and their Publishers’. 11. Manuscript copy with pasted printed leaflet in the Prints & Drawings library of the British Museum: 1932.0311.42.

KT496Signed l.c.: Sarah Smith, watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic, with a black line border44 x 34 cm.; 17 ¼ x 13 3/8 inchesProvenanceFrances Smith Beale (1800-1849), the artist’s niece, daughter of Frances Mary Stone (1769-1852), sister of the artist;Ellen Beale Brooker d. 1900, (m. in 1868 William Watkiss Lloyd, 1813-1893);Eireene Watkiss Lloyd; daughter of the above m. William Docker Drysdale (1866-1952) of Wick Hall, Radley, Oxfordshire;William Docker Drysdale (1906-1985); Park End, Radley;Patrick Dockar-Drysdale (1929-2020), Wick Hall, Radley;LiteratureChristine Jackson, Sarah Stone Natural Curiosities from the New Worlds, 1998, p. 131 no. 6 (Watercolour Drawings by Sarah Stone in Public and Private Institutions-Private Collection A)Sarah Stone was the first female British painter of birds and animals to achieve professional recognition. Her drawings of birds are a highly important visual record of the specimens held in collections in late eighteenth century England and included some from the voyages of Captain Cook, and were exhibited at the Leverian Museum in 1784. This spectacular drawing with its finished background is an important work intended for display.Stone was employed when she was still in her mid-teens to draw the objects in the Holophusican or Leverian Museum, housed in the former royal palace Leicester House, and a major cultural institution of the day. She was to work there for nearly thirty years. Its owner, Sir Ashton Lever (1729-1788) commissioned her by 1777 to record specimens and ethnographic material brought back by British expeditions to Australia, the Americas, Africa and the Far East.For financial reasons, Lever had to dispose of his collection in the 1780s, by lottery. Before doing so he apparently commissioned Sarah Stone to depict the birds, ethnography and antiquities. From January to March 1784 Lever exhibited Stone’s work, advertising the show as:‘a large Room of Transparent Drawings from the most curious specimens in the collection, consisting of above one thousand different articles, executed by Miss Stone, a young lady who is allowed by all Artists to have succeeded in the effort beyond imagination. These will continue to be open for the inspection of the public until they are removed into the country. Admittance HALF-A-CROWN each…Good fires in all the galleries.’ (See C. Jackson, ibid, p. 22).Lever kept Stone’s drawings after the exhibition was over. The Leverian Museum continued to grow under new ownership through the 1780s and 1790s, and Stone continued working there. This exceptional drawing of a macaw can be linked with one of the three specimens of this bird sold at the sale of the Leverian Museum in 1806 when the collection was dispersed (see Christine Jackson, ibid, p. 131).Stone also drew items from other private collections and the British Museum. As most of the actual specimens have not survived, her drawings are a vital record of contemporary collections, few of which produced catalogues, and give valuable insight into the collecting practises of contemporary museums.Stone was the daughter of James Stone, a fan painter, and it is highly likely that she assisted her father. As a child she was taught to make her own pigments using natural ingredients - the intense blues and yellows of this work are extraordinary and a testament to her skill at mixing pigments. She practised working in bodycolour as well as watercolour as a child, and the exquisite brushwork which can be seen in the drawing of the feathers of the macaw also demonstrates her skill at using bodycolour and gum arabic to intensify the colours. The tree branches which Stone habitually included in her drawings are a distinctive feature of her work. Very few of her works include a sky, and Christine Jackson ibid, p. 16, suggests that she included them in watercolours which were intended to be framed. The spectacular and carefully draw nature of the present work appears to bear this out and suggests that it was an important work intended for display which remained in her family.Stone exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in 1781, 1785 and 1786. She exhibited paintings of birds at the Society of Artists in 1791. She married John Langdale Smith, a midshipman, on 8 September 1789 and exhibited as a ‘painter’ before her marriage and in her married name as an ‘Honorary Exhibitor’ thereafter. She painted less after her marriage, mainly drawing live birds which her husband, also an artist, brought back from his travels. She signed her work with her married name of Smith and thus the present work must date from after September 1789.Stone was nearly thirty when she married, and a daughter Eliza, who probably died in infancy, was baptised in September 1792 at St John the Evangelist, Westminster. A son, Henry Stone Smith (1795-1881) was baptized in the same church in March 1795. The family has a note by him recording a bird ‘Topial’, probably a troupial, brought back from the West Indies by his father and living and domesticated with the family (see C. Jackson, ibid, p. 30).Further examples of Stone’s watercolours can be found in the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, London, the National Library of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales, the Yale Center for British Art, the Getty, the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii and the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand.Paris Spies-Gans has written about Stone’s participation in the imperial project in Paul Mellon Centre Notes, No. 20, ‘Colonialism in the Photographic Archive’, January 2022, pp. 11-12).The blue and yellow macaw (Psittacus arauna), also known as the blue-and-gold-macaw is a large South American parrot, and one of the most popular. They live in forests and woodlands. In captivity they are known for their skill at mimicry.Patrick (Paddy) Dockar-Drysdale (1929-2020)Born in Shropshire, after his education at Oxford Paddy went to Canada with his wife Olwen, as a stage-manager of a theatre company in Newfoundland. They stayed in Canada from 1955 until 1982. Paddy switched from theatre to teaching English as an assistant professor at the University of Newfoundland and then to publishing in Toronto. His specialisms were the use of language, dialects and lexicography. He made an important contribution to the codification of Canadian English.The Dockar-Drysdales returned to England to Wick Hall, Radley where they restored the grounds and gardens.Patrick Dockar-Drysdale was a descendant of Sarah Stone and had a lifelong fascination with her work about which he was knowledgeable and which he collected throughout his life. It seems likely that the macaw may have come down in the family of the artist’s niece, Frances Smith Sheppard (1800-1849), who married Lionel John Beale, a surgeon. In 1868 their daughter Ellen Brooker Beale (d. 1900), married the businessman (who worked in the family tobacco firm) and writer William Watkiss Lloyd (1813-1893). He wrote on the classics and history, his best-known work ‘The Age of Pericles’, 1875. Sophia Beale (1837-1920), the artist, writer and sister of Ellen Beale, discussed his work in a ‘Memoir’ prefixed to Lloyd’s posthumously published ‘Elijah Fenton: his Poetry and Friends’, 1894. Their daughter Eireene Watkiss Lloyd was Patrick Docker-Drysdale’s grandmother, who took the drawing to Wick Hall after her marriage to William Docker-Drysdale (1866-1952).

SOLDTwo, pencil, inscribed on old mount: Arabian & young rhinocerosOne 8 x 24.3 cm; 7 x 9 1/2 inches, the other 12 x 18.7 cm; 4 3/4 x 7 3/8 inchesThe artist studied in Paris and made many drawings of animals throughout his career. He visited Australia in 1850, New Zealand in 1856 and returned to England in 1862. He was a Fellow of the Zoological Society.

SOLDSigned and dated in pen and brown ink: William Strutt/Aug.t.31st./89., pencil17.8 x 27 cm.; 7 x 10 5/8 inchesProvenanceThe Redfern Gallery Ltd. Summer Exhibition, 1955, no. 21; sold toJohn Bensusan-Butt, September 7, 1955;Private collection, U.K. until 2020Strutt, born in Devon, was from a family of artists. He studied in Paris and made many drawings of animals throughout his career during which he travelled extensively. He visited Australia in 1850, New Zealand in 1856 and returned to England in 1862.His work is highly prized in the Antipodes and his most famous painting Black Thursday, 6 February. 1851, painted later in 1864, which depicts animals and men fleeing from a bush fire, is one of the treasures of the State Library of Victoria. His work can be found in several other Australian and New Zealand museums and several monographs have been written about his time there.He was a Fellow of the Zoological Society and he drew animals throughout his career.

Pencil, indistinctly inscribed l.l.: Let in ..? and water20 x 24.5 cm.; 8 x 9 ¾ inchesThe son of William Strutt, Alfred was born in New Zealand. Like his father he drew animals throughout his career and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy.

Watercolour over pencil with a touch of bodycolour on brown paper8 x 11 cmProvenanceHolland & Holland

KT 490SOLDSigned with initials and dated l.r.; A.T./April 3 1918, watercolour with bodycolour over pencil on green paper18.7 x 14 cm.; 7 ½ x 5 ½ inchesPrivate collection U.K. until 2021

SOLDKT344Signed with monogram and dated l.l.: JW RA. 1822 and inscribed on original mount l.c.: MARIA/ By Mr. R. Colling's George. Herd Book. P. 396, pencil25.5 x 35.6 cm; 10 x 14 inchesProvenancePresumably Charles and Harriet Arbuthnott, 1822;The Fine Art Society, 1972;Anonymous sale; James Adam & Sons, Dublin, 6 March 1973, lot 342;John Ross, by descent until 2019Ward is primarily remembered as a painter of animals. In 1800 he was engaged by the Board of Agriculture and Josiah Boydell, the print publisher, to portray two hundred examples of the various breeds of cattle, sheep and swine to illustrate the surveys of livestock which the Board had undertaken in England, Scotland and Wales. Boydell was to engrave the drawings for which Ward was to receive 15 guineas. Although the project never saw completion it led to the artist’s introduction to a group of rich patrons and many commissions.Maria was part of a commission of lithographs of cattle from Charles Arbuthnott (1767-1850), and specifically referred to by name, in a letter to the artist dated 30 October 1822, in which he expressed his desire to receive a lithographic drawing of Maria, presumably the present drawing (see Edward J. Nygren, ‘James Ward RA (1769-1859): Papers and Patrons’, The Walpole Society, vol. LXXV, 2013).Charles Arbuthnott was a Tory politician, a diplomat, who served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1804-1807 and a good friend of the Duke of Wellington. His second wife, Harriet Fane, who owned Maria the cow, was a hostess at Wellington’s dinners and the author of a diary recording political intrigues of the day.John Ross (1919-2011) built up a collection of drawings and watercolours at his home at Knockmore, outside Dublin. He was an active member and Chairman of the Irish Friends of the National Collections, playing an important role in securing many great works for the Irish national collection.

Watercolour over traces of pencil with gum arabic25.2 x 31.6 cm.; 9 7/8 x 12 3/8 inchesProvenanceDavid Cornwell (aka John Le Carré, 1931-2020)Augusta Innes Withers, the daughter of a Chaplain to the Prince Regent, was born in Cheltenham. She was well known to contemporaries and widely praised for her botanical and bird pictures, characterised by her meticulously detailed and accurate work, which is beautifully illustrated in the present watercolour of canaries. The bird food is in an octagonal trencher salt made of French faience or Dutch delft.Withers enjoyed a successful career and exhibited widely, at the Royal Academy in London from 1829 to 1846, the Royal Society of British Artists where she showed sixty-eight works between 1832-65 and the New Watercolour Society. She was one of the earliest members of the Society of Women Artists where she exhibited forty-three works from 1857-75.Withers enjoyed Royal patronage and was appointed flower painter to Queen Adelaide in 1833, and flower and fruit painter to Queen Victoria in 1864. She is also listed as a painter to the Horticultural Society.In 1822 she married Theodore Withers (1782-1869), an accountant from Middlesex. The couple lived mainly in London and had at least two children, Theodore (b. 1823) and Augusta (b. 1825).Withers contributed to many publications including The Botanist, John Lindley’s The Pomological Magazine and Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. She illustrated Robert Thompson’s The Gardener’s Assistant, 1859 and collaborated with Sarah Drake on James Bateman’s Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala.Three of Withers’ paintings are in the Natural History Museum, London. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge has a good holding of her watercolours, as does the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society.David Cornwell is better known by his pen name of John Le Carré, whose spy novels are internationally renowned, and many have been adapted for film and television. He worked for the Security Services in the 1950s and 1960s before turning to writing full time.