George Morland Three studies of heads of Cotswold sheep

Pencil9 x 15 cm.; 3 ½ x 6 inchesProvenanceThe artist's studio sale, Christie's, 8 - 15 May 1874, bt. by Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd. (23366);J.M.M., a Christmas present from C. 1962

Stamped with estate stamp l.l., watercolour and pencil on tan paper, numbered verso in pencil: 67 (twice)16.2 x 12.9 cm.; 6 3/8 x 5 1/8 inchesProvenanceThe Estate of the artist, by descentIn February 1904 Gwen John and Dorelia McNeill left Toulouse for Paris where they took a room in the Hôtel de Mont Blanc at 19 Boulevard Edgar Quinet in the 14th arrondissement. They acquired a female tortoiseshell cat with a white breast which Gwen John named after the street and drew frequently, and which would appear to be the subject of the present drawing which dates from around 1905-1908.Gwen John had many cats throughout her life, and when Edgar Quinet disappeared in 1908 she wrote a poem in her memory entitled Au Chat which she sent to Rodin. Her remarkable cat drawings capture the personality of the animals and are understandably acclaimed.

Pen and brown and grey ink and watercolour on two sheets of laid paper, joined25.8 x 36.7 cm.; 10 x 14 ½ inchesProvenanceBy descent from the artist until 2015;Guy Peppiatt Ltd.;Hugo Burge (1979-2023)Abbott was one of the best amateur watercolourists of the late Eighteenth Century. A surgeon and apothecary, he lived in Exeter until 1825. He exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy from 1793, receiving contemporary acclaim for the style of his work. The artist John Downman said that ‘he prefers his drawings before his paintings, as they are done with more spirit’ (J. Farington, Diary 26 June 1804; vol. VI, p. 2362).In 1825 Abbott inherited Fordland, a Devon estate, from his uncle James White, an Exeter barrister, Nonconformist and close friend of Francis Towne. Abbott became a patron and pupil of Towne’s, and his linear style shows the artist’s influence. After moving to Fordland he devoted himself to drawing where this work is most likely to have been drawn.

KT609Signed and dated l.l.: M.E. Cotman/June .18th, pencil, in a 19th century burr maple frame33 x 24.5 cm.; 13 x 9 5/8 inchesProvenanceDr Henry Lowe and Judy Lowe (née) Cotman until 2023

Pen and grey ink and watercolour over pencil11 x 17.2 cm.; 4 ¼ x 6 ¾ inchesProvenance: Sotheby’s, London, 29 October 1964, lot 248; Ann Spokes Symonds, OxfordAnn Symonds worked for the Fine Art Society in 1960s.

Signed with initials and dated l.r.: 10 December 1859 ED, pencil heightened with white on blue paper23.8 x 17.8 cm.; 9 3/8 x 7 inchesProvenanceArnold Fellows;Bequeathed to Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall until sold by a charitable trust, 2023The artist was born in Worcester and trained there and in Birmingham. He specialised in depictions of country life and his drawings of young girls are delightfully and minutely observed.Arnold Fellows was a pupil at Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall, between 1911 and 1917. He became a master of the school for a brief period, before moving to spend the remainder of his life as a teacher at Chigwell School in Essex. Fellows devoted much of his life to collecting art, notably works on paper, and eventually donated his entire collection to his old school. He was the author of The wayfarer's companion: England's history in her buildings and countryside, published by Oxford University Press, 1937.

Pen and brown ink and wash over traces of pencil on laid paper12 x 9.7 cm.; 4 ¾ x 3 3/4 inchesFramed in a dark wood moulding31 x 29 cm.; 12 1/4 x 11 1/2 inchesProvenance: Dickinson

Signed with initials in pencil l.r.: HBB, watercolour24 x 17 cm.; 9 ½ x 6 ¾ inchesProvenancePietro Raffo, until 2022£2200This watercolour shows the influence of J.M.W. Turner, whose watercolour studies were copied by Brabazon.

Signed and inscribed on pink ribbon: Mrs Withers 26 Grove Place. Delt., watercolour with gum arabic12 x 23.9 cm; 4 3⁄4 x 9 3⁄8 inchesProvenance: Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven (1800– 1973)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 exemplified in the present drawing. Withers 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 Society of Painters in Water Colours. She was one of the earliest members of the Society of Women Artists where she exhibited forty-three works from 1857–75.Withers was appointed flower painter to Queen Adelaide in 1833, flower and fruit painter to Queen Victoria in 1864 and is 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 a large number of publications including The Botanist, John Lindley’s Pomonological 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’ works are in the Natural History Museum, London, and a large number of her original watercolours are held in the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society.Henry Rogers Broughton succeeded his older brother Urban Huttlestone Broughton as the 2nd Lord Fairhaven in 1966. He was born in the United States and 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 one hundred and twenty ower paintings, over nine hundred watercolours and drawings and forty- four volumes of drawings by botanical artists such as Redouté and Ehret to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in the Broughton Bequest.

Inscribed and dated l.l.: Monte Generoso/1879, and further inscribed with colour notes, pen and brown ink over pencil25 x 51.5 cm; 9 7/8 x 20 1/4 inches£8500Lear returned to Varese and Monte Generoso, on the border between Italy and Switzerland between lakes Lugano and Como, from June 29 to September 22 1879. He stayed at Mendrisio, across the Swiss border in Ticino. He enjoyed sketching the views south across the plains, as in the present watercolour and the mountains stretching up to the Alps. Marianne North the botanical artist came to Como towards the end of his stay and they made a trip to Monte Civita near Monza together.This drawing is taken from a similar vantage point to that of an oil of the same subject dated 1880 in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum (WA196.39).An unpublished poem “The Lays of the Octopods’ about the perils of mass tourism at Monte Generoso has recently come to light in the British Library.