Botanical (SOLD)

Inscribed l.r.: Buah Nam nam./Cynometra cauliflora. and with further botanical notes in Latin, Jawi and Greek, watercolour and bodycolour over traces of pencil with gum arabic, on laid paper watermarked: RUSE & TURNERS/1825 and with the Strasburg Lily37.5 x 48.5 cm; 14 3/4 x 19 1/4 inchesBuah Nam is a member of the family Fabaceae (legumes) native to Malaysia, a small, cauliflorous tree with a thick, heavily branched stem, and rather small flowers, about 1.2 cm across, that appear on the stem in clusters. The pod is edible with aromatic, juicy yellow pulp and large seeds.ProvenanceSharon and Anne Hamlyn until 2019These fine examples of watercolours by Chinese Artists of the Straits School are in the style of the Chinese artists who worked for Sir Stamford Raffles in Singapore and Major-General William Farquhar (c.1771-1839) who was Resident of Malacca from 1808-1818. The frequent movements of trade and personnel between India and China, via ports on the Malay peninsula including Malacca and Prince of Wales Island, meant that collectors frequently had both Indian and Chinese drawings in their collections. Henry Noltie has suggested that this school is named ‘Straits School’ (see Forgotten Masters Indian Painting for the East India Company, ed. W. Dalrymple, 2019, pp. 78-82).British patrons commissioned local Chinese artists to draw the flora and fauna of Malacca and the extensive botanical annotations in Jawi, the Malay script derived from Arabic, Romanised Malay, Latin and Greek and with reference to the Linnaean system of classification, created by Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) are typical of this material.The accumulation of natural history drawings by officials of the British East India Company gave rise to the term ‘Company School’, now out of favour, which has been used to describe the work of Indian or Chinese artists for British patrons. The distinctive style is a result of a fusion of two artistic traditions, the European with its desire for realism and the Asian taste for a more stylised approach.The eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw an enormous rise of interest in Europe in the study of natural history by both scientists and amateurs. A knowledge of the subject was considered to be an important part of a liberal education and many people studied ‘natural philosophy’ and the various branches of natural history. Accurate drawings were vital tools in classification as well as a reminder of the excited reaction to new discoveries.

Inscribed l.r.: Buah rambootan./Nephelium lappaceum./Monaecia pentandria L. and with further botanical notes, watercolour and bodycolour over traces of pencil with gum arabic, on laid paper watermarked: RUSE & TURNERS/1825 and with the Strasburg Lily38.2 x 48.7 cm; 15 x 19 inchesProvenanceSharon and Anne Hamlyn until 2019These fine examples of watercolours by Chinese Artists of the Straits School are in the style of the Chinese artists who worked for Sir Stamford Raffles in Singapore and Major-General William Farquhar (c.1771-1839) who was Resident of Malacca from 1808-1818. The frequent movements of trade and personnel between India and China, via ports on the Malay peninsula including Malacca and Prince of Wales Island, meant that collectors frequently had both Indian and Chinese drawings in their collections. Henry Noltie has suggested that this school is named ‘Straits School’ (see Forgotten Masters Indian Painting for the East India Company, ed. W. Dalrymple, 2019, pp. 78-82).British patrons commissioned local Chinese artists to draw the flora and fauna of Malacca and the extensive botanical annotations in Jawi, the Malay script derived from Arabic, Romanised Malay, Latin and Greek and with reference to the Linnaean system of classification, created by Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) are typical of this material.The accumulation of natural history drawings by officials of the British East India Company gave rise to the term ‘Company School’, now out of favour, which has been used to describe the work of Indian or Chinese artists for British patrons. The distinctive style is a result of a fusion of two artistic traditions, the European with its desire for realism and the Asian taste for a more stylised approach.The eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw an enormous rise of interest in Europe in the study of natural history by both scientists and amateurs. A knowledge of the subject was considered to be an important part of a liberal education and many people studied ‘natural philosophy’ and the various branches of natural history. Accurate drawings were vital tools in classification as well as a reminder of the excited reaction to new discoveries.

SOLDIncluding a group of views of and from Kelbarrow and the surrounding area of Grasmere, the church, Grasmere, where I fish, the view from the front of the house where we have all our meals in the summer in the shade of tall rhododendrons, also including the front quad of Oriel College, Oxford with Merton tower, Magdelen tower, Oxford, boathouses on the Isis, a lion of Trafalgar Square, interior of York Minster and othersTwenty-seven, pencil, all laid into the sketchbook and most with drawings of plants in pen and black ink decorating the surrounding page, a photograph and a couple of slips of paper with annotations inserted,inscribed on the flyleaf: E.S./from/M.L.S./Xmas.1875 (E.S.is presumably Elizabeth Lily Sumner (1855–1930), her oldest sister)The drawings 10.8 x 13.8 cm and smaller, the sketchbook 13.5 x 16.8 cm, bound in green boards with a leather spineProvenance: The family of the artist, by descent until 2019This sketchbook includes a group of very fine drawings of Kelbarrow and the surrounding area of Grasmere in the Lake District and was presumably a Christmas present from the artist to her sister Elizabeth in 1875. The detailed pencil landscapes are surrounded by pen and ink drawings of plants drawn directly onto the pages of the book. The plants include ivy, lily of the valley Convallaria majalis, dog rose Rosa canina, snowberry Symphoricarpus albus, Ash Fraxinus excelsior, holly Ilex aquifolium, rush, primrose Primula vulgaris, grasses, apple blossom Malus domestica, Gingko biloba, blackberry Rubus fruticosus, snowdrop Galanthus nivalis, foliage of an umbellifer, bracken Pteridium aquilinum, english bluebell and others.Maggie Sumner was the only female artist to contribute to the first five issues of The Yellow Book, the fashionable magazine edited by Aubrey Beardsley which ran from 1894–97, taking its name from the notorious covering into which controversial French novels were placed at the time. Her pen and ink landscape sketch Plein Air appeared in number four, the last of the volumes issued under Beardsley’s editorship. Her career after this is as yet unrecorded.A collection of papers relating to the Sumner family in the possession of the Cumbria Archive Centre includes a series of eleven (unpublished) autograph letters by John Ruskin to his promising pupil, Maggie Sumner, dating from 1881–1886, which suggests that they may have met both in Oxford and at Brantwood. Towards the end of his life Ruskin had a number of correspondence pupils. His first comment in June 1881 was that her drawings were excellent with scarcely any fault. He gave her constructive criticism as in this letter of 5 July 1881 with detailed commentary on a drawing of a photograph of Rouen:I must not keep your drawings longer, though they still puzzle me, and not a little. With most students, the tendency to lose breadth in defining parts is a mere weakness: - in you, it is a kind of strength; the intensity with which you fasten on complex forms and colours having something in it like old German involved Gothic. Still, I must check the exaggerated - power, I will call it, rather than fault - and ask you to tell me if on seeing your copy of the Rouen Photo again with a fresh eye, it does not appear to you patchy, chippy - gritty, - hatchy, - botchy - (I don’t mean all these things - but something which they all partly describe) - as compared with the original? - Try a little bit again and see if you cannot get it softer and more like shade, where shade is, and more [broad] in light where light is. And - in trees, do a single branch instead of a whole tree. And do it perfectly or as perfectly as you can - keeping the shades mysterious.In May 1883 he wrote:In May 1883 he wrote: I liked your drawings much more than I told you... Work at anything you can do without too much trouble while you’re here - mossy rock if possible, and send it me.On 6 Jun 1883 Ruskin instructed Sumner what to draw: In the first place - attend to sky. - drawing all interesting cloud forms you can seize - and noting effects of morning and [evening]. In the second place, draw tree branches and foliage masses for light and shade only and anatomy of branch - letting colour alone. In the third place - draw any birds you can see - any here and paint any that are going to be cooked. Fish also, if to be had. I don’t think there’s any chance of your getting a scold from me, unless you stop working.And on 15 July 1888:Sketch the clouds in pencil - add from memory all you can, in colour the day after, if possible...The birds I meant were geese - ducks - cocks and hens... try to draw a Hen’s wing! or a duck’s breast! - I am so glad you are happier in your work - Be sure you will be more & more so. -and more useful than in any other way. The last letter dating from 24 September 1886 praises the development in Sumner’s work: your becoming fastidious in choice is the best possible sign. - But try to see how by a little change in place or introduction of minor object, even the imperfect subject may be made effective. I hope to be well enough to give you a scolding at Brantwood next time you are near me.

SOLDSigned l.r.: A.T./oct.8.1918, watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of bodycolour on green paper28 x 35.3 cm.; 11 x 13 7/8 inchesProvenanceThe Moorland Gallery, Cork Street

KT 187Signed and dated l.r.: John Ward/1995, watercolour over pencil with white chalk on grey paper, framed in a silk mount in a wooden moulding18.5 x 27.2 cm: 11 1/4 x 10 3/4 inchesExhibitedMall Galleries, ‘The Discerning Eye’, 1990This charming drawing is a fine example of Ward at his fluent best.The artist’s work can be found in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain, amongst many others.

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.