Alfred William Strutt A lioness

Signed with initials l.r.: HSM, watercolour over traces of pencil on buff paper heightened with white24 x 9 cm.; 5 ¾ x 3 ¾ inchesFrame size 27 x 18.5 cm.; 9½ x 7 ½ inchesProvenanceThe Fine Art SocietyMarks’ 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.: W HUNT, watercolour with bodycolour on artist’s board16 x 20.3 cm; 6 1/4 x 8 inchesPrimroses were a favourite subject of Hunt’s, and one which he frequently exhibited in the 1840s and 1850s.Hunt was born with a deformation of his legs which restricted his movement and he worked mainly from the studio, as painting outside was difficult for him. He specialised in carefully drawn smale-scale still lifes like this one as a result and pioneered new techniques of watercolour, using stipple techniques in subtle colour combinations and achieving a brightness of colour by overlaying washes over white gouache.

Signed with initials l.r.: HBB, watercolour and bodycolour over pencil, inscribed verso: Siracuse and stamped with collector’s markProvenanceGilbert Davis (L. 757a.);Edward Seago, his estate sale at Christie’s, London 1 March 1977, lot 94;Where bought by B.M. Williams;Christie’s, London, 21 November 2007, lot 145, where acquired by the previous owner until 2025 Gilbert Davis (1899–1983) built up a large collection of watercolours in the middle of the twentieth century. He sold the bulk of his collection in 1959 to the Huntingdon Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. Edward Seago RBA, RWS (1910-1974) was one of the most popular British artists of 20th century, who painted in oils and watercolours.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Cave on the Island/of Elephanta/Dec 9th. 69 and further signed by another, watercolour over pencil.The artist visited the famous Hindu temple carved into the rockface on the island of Elephanta. Constructed between the fifth and sixth century, the temple is part of the ‘City of Caves’ devoted to the cult of Shiva.For further work by this artist please see the catalogue link and enquire about availability: https://media.karentaylorfineart.com/pdfs/Constance-Frederica-Gordon-Cumming-KTFA-2025.pdf

Signed with monogram l.r., inscribed l.l.: near Calikut., watercolour heightened with touches of bodycolourProvenanceFranklin Lushington (1823-1901) and thence by descentLear was invited to India by his friend and patron Lord Northbrook who was appointed Viceroy in 1871, and his journey there was the last and longest of his life. He was overwhelmed by the colour and vitality of India and enjoyed the bustle of Viceregal life.Calicut, or present-day Kozhikode, is on the Malabar coast in Kerala and was a centre of the Indian spice trade. Edward Lear arrived there in October 1874, just as the monsoon began. He was warned about the dangers of contracting fever but stayed, despite the pouring rain, until the skies were clear enough to draw. He described the roads around the city as “of such redundant beauty one can hardly dream.” Franklin Lushington, Lear’s close friend and first owner of this drawing, was the son of Edmund Henry Lushington. He was appointed judge to the Supreme Court of Justice in the Ionian Islands in 1855 and Lear went with him to live in Corfu. They first met in Malta in 1849, where Franklin’s elder brother Henry was Chief Secretary to the government. On his death, Lear left all his papers to Lushington, who later destroyed most of them.

Inscribed verso: Primrose Hill coloured on the spot by/Girtin, watercolour over pencil on oatmeal paper.19.7 x 48.7 cm.; 7 ¾ x 19 inchesProvenanceArthur Boney, his sale, Sotheby’s, 7 October 1947, lot 34, bought by P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. , London;Ray Livingston Murphy (1923-1953), New York, by 1950, his sale, Christie’s, 19 November 1985, lot 35; Robert Tear, OBE (1939-2011), his sale, Sotheby’s, 9 July 2014, lot 189;With Guy Peppiatt Fine Art;Private collection, U.K. until 2024LiteratureT. Girtin and D. Loshak, The Art of Thomas Girtin, 1954, no. 416, p. 191;G. Smith, Thomas Girtin (1775-1802): An Online CatalogueArchive and Introduction to the Artist, TG1761ExhibitedNew Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Prospects, 1950, no. 18., pl. 9b;Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, London, British Drawings and Watercolours, 2015, no. 17This panoramic landscape has been identified as showing Primrose Hill in north London, on the basis of an inscription on the back of the drawing, and Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak consequently dated it to 1800–1801. The area was then undeveloped. It did not become a place of leisure and recreation until well into the nineteenth century, since when the rapid expansion of the city northwards changed the appearance of the landscape so greatly that it may never be possible to confirm the identification of the view with certainty.The work may well have been coloured on the spot, as the inscription suggests, as it is worked in a limited palette without much foreground detail.

Pen and grey ink and wash, inscribed verso and dated: Kerswell Oct.3.181223.7 x 37 cm.; 9 ¼ x 14 ½ inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K. until 2025Kerswell is a hamlet in the Teignbridge district of Devon north-east of Exeter.

William Henry Hunt, OWS (1790-1864)Lighting the BrazierSigned l.l.: W HUNT., watercolour over traces of pencil with scratching out, title inscribed on original frame36.2 x 26.7 cm.; 14 ¼ x 10 ½ inchesProvenanceAgnew’s, Liverpool, no. 253;Malllams, Oxford, 19 March 2026, lot 443This unpublished watercolour is a notable addition to the group of black subjects drawn by W.H. Hunt held in public collections in the UK and USA. It fits into a group on which Hunt was working in 1830s depicting black children warming themselves by fires. For domestic servants lighting fires was a daily job.In the 1830s Hunt exhibited twenty humorous images of children which were later lithographed as Hunt’s Comic Sketches published in 1844, including two of black children, including Master James Crow -Out of His Element and Miss Jim Ima Crow seated by fires. The Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, has the original watercolour of Jim Crow which appears to show the same black boy as in the present work (see J. Witt, William Henry Hunt (1790-1846), 1982, no.477, see lithograph). Both boys are shown seated in front of a brazier, a suggestion that they feel the cold alluded to in the title of the lithograph, seated on a barrel or basket of the same height. The present watercolour (executed circa 1830-40) also has similarities with a watercolour of the same black model holding a slate at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London also entitled ‘A Brown Study’ (FA526). Both drawings share the same neutral background and have an added strip at the top. Another version of this work, without an added strip, is in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art (B1975.4.583).Hunt made several other studies of black sitters, including a drawing of a young girl in pencil on buff paper in the Courtauld Institute, London and a boy posing as a boxer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2020.120). Jan Marsh has suggested that because of Hunt’s choice of theme his sitters are most likely to have been youths aged around 10 – 14 years old who were not at school or apprenticed but earning small amounts in the street running errands, carrying parcels and doing other small jobs, and were therefore visible and available to artists notably in London, Bristol and Liverpool (private email March 2026). Hunt preferred to use the same sitters as models. Hunt was born with a deformation of his legs which restricted his movement and seems to have had a form of dwarfism. According to his early biographer, F. G. Stephens, Hunt was: ‘was a little less than… five foot. He was broad as well as round shouldered and his head was large beyond proportion to the rest of his figure which the torso was that of a larger man. His large and long frock coats and loose trousers although favourable to him on other accounts, did not add to his outward graces.’ . Stephens adds that Hunt’s personal disabilities: ‘frequently made him reserved and not very easily accessible to strangers.’ While Hunt’s interactions with black sitters were inevitably informed by the prejudices of his age it is quite possible that his own disability drew him to marginalised members of his society. He is known to have befriended black acrobats and musicians.British artists showed increasing interest in Black subjects during the 1830s. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire over the years 1833 -1838 and the abolition movement was hotly debated in Parliament and beyond.

Charles Gore (1729-1807)A view of the East front of Arundel Castle, West Sussex, seen from the Bowling GreenInscribed l. r.: Arundel Castle taken from the Platform or/Bowling Green by Charles Gore Esq 1781 and indistinctly inscribed in pencil u. r.: Arundel Castle Sufsex/1781Watercolour over touches of pencil on laid paper, with a Whatman watermark19.6 by 49 cm., 7 ¾ by 19 ¼ inchesProvenanceIolo Williams (1890-1962); And by descent until sold Sotheby's, London, 13 July 1989, lot 5; Private collection;With Guy Peppiatt Fine ArtThe bowling green is the name for the square earthworks located, with the fishponds, on the east side of the castle. They were probably made originally to improve the castle’s defences during the Civil War. Used as a bowling green in eighteenth century, as shown in the drawing by Charles Gore, today a rose garden can be found here. The Hon. Charles Gore was the son of a Lincolnshire landowner and educated at Westminster. He married a wealthy heiress of a shipbuilding company and learnt to draw and design ships. Gore travelled extensively in Europe, sketching with the German artist Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807). Gore copied marine oils, completed the unfinished drawings of other artists, and also developed his own style having acquired an expert knowledge of the sea. His interest in classical antiquities led Charles Gore to join Hackert and Richard Payne Knight on their expedition to Sicily from April to June 1777.In 1779 Gore returned to England and became a member of the Dilettanti Society in 1781. He painted a series of panoramic views of Sussex including the current drawing. The family returned to the Continent in 1782 and he settled in Weimar in 1791 with his daughter Eliza. Examples of Gore's work can be found in the British Museum, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Weimar.

Inscribed on original label now attached to backboard: General Distant View of the Carnarvonshire Mountains, seen from the road beyond Llangerniew,/going by the Vale of the Elwyn from St Asaph to Llanrwst-Principal in this Towering Group, are Moel Siabod, Snowdon, The Glyders/ and Trevaon Denbighshire, watercolour over pencil.13 x 20.8 cm.; 5 1/8 x 8 ¼ inchesProvenanceGeorge Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick (1746-1816), no. 17, part of an album sold at Sotheby’s, 17 June 1936;With Leger Galleries, 1980; Christie’s, London, 20 November 1984, lot 113, where bought by a private collector, until 2024Smith seems to have been fascinated by the Welsh countryside and dated drawings, often inscribed ‘taken on the spot’, point to visits nearly every year from 1784-1798, after his return from Italy.The artist was born in Cumberland and patronised by 2nd Earl of Warwick who sponsored his travels to Italy in 1776 and whose name became the artist’s sobriquet. Smith spent five years in Rome and Naples, befriending William Pars and Thomas Jones, in whose Memoirs he is frequently referenced. He travelled home in 1781 through Switzerland with Francis Towne and was among the most admired watercolourists of his day.