Luke Elwes Waterline series, 2017

ABPPaul Sandby, R.A. (1731- 1809)The River Wye at New Weir, HerefordshireSigned in brushpoint l.l.: P Sandby RA, watercolour and bodycolour, with old labels attached to backboard (illegible)ProvenanceThe Fine Art Society, London;Private collection, U.K.The Longstone can be seen prominently on the left of the composition above the Wye where fishermen and rowers are enjoying the river. Sandby includes the busy iron manufactory on the opposite bank. Many of the tourists who flocked to the river Wye to enjoy its picturesque scenery and to climb Yat Rock also included a visit to the forge, and images of this stretch of the river often include depictions of the lime kilns, stone quarries, and iron and tin works that dotted its banks. Paul Sandby and his brother Thomas (1717-1798) began their careers making maps and military drawings in Scotland. Founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768, they both taught in military establishments and Paul was recognised as the leading topographical artist of his time. The artist toured South Wales with Sir Joseph Banks and others in 1773 which resulted in his series of aquatints of published in 1775-1776. His detailed watercolours of the picturesque landscape and the popular prints fuelled the nascent tourism attracting visitors to the Wye Valley.

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.

Henry Pilleau (1813-1899)The Dead SeaSigned with monogram l.l., watercolour 21 x 38 cm.; 8 ¼ x 15 inchesProvenancePresented to Queen Victoria in 1887 for her Golden Jubilee by the Royal Society of Water-Colour PaintersPilleau served with 16th Lancers. He is best known for his colourful watercolours and prints of Egypt. He visited Egypt in 1840s with Lieutenant -Colonel Sir George Everest (1790-1866), Surveyor-General of India, presumably on the men’s way to India. Pilleau’s ‘Sketches in Egypt’ comprising 12 lithographs was published in London in 1845 by Dickinson and dedicated to Everest. It comprises text and colourful plates of famous views and sites. Everest, a Welsh surveyor and geographer, after whom Mount Everest was named, served as the Surveyor General of India (1830–1843) and worked on the Great Trigonometric Survey of India.This watercolour left the Royal collection in the early twentieth century together with a substantial number of other works on paper, and there is no documentation for this with the Royal Collection. The other works whose details are recorded on the sheet of Windsor notepaper attached to the backboard were also dispersed at this time ( from the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art gift, Llyn Crafnant by D.W. Barker (the rendering of his name as ‘Banken’ suggests that someone was inaccurately copying from another source); Time-Honoured Lancaster by R. Aspinwall; and A Breezy Day by R. Short).

Samuel Palmer, RWS (1805-1881)La Vocotella near Corpo di Cava, ItalyPencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour with scratching out 26.7 x 37.8 cm.; 10 ½ x 14 7/8 inchesProvenanceWith Agnew’s, London 2002, no. 53Anonymous sale Sotheby’s, London, 23 November 2006, lot 145;W/S Fine Art, ‘Andrew Wyld: Connoisseur Dealer’, Christie’s, London, 10 July 2012, lot 147;Timothy Clowes, his sale at Sotheby’s, London, 23 September 2021, lot 148;Where bought by a private collector until 2026Samuel and Hannah Palmer stayed at a small inn at Corpo di Cava on their Italian honeymoon in the summer of 1838. The inn overlooked a Benedictine monastery and a ravine. During this very happy period of his life, Palmer produced some of his finest watercolours, which combined the mysticism of his Shoreham work with more Italianate composition and structure. He told his friend George Richmond that it was here that he felt he was ‘no longer a mere maker of sketches, but an artist’ (E. Malins Samuel Palmer’s Italian Honeymoon, 1968, p. 73).This watercolour is constructed on classical lines with the receding serpentine path with a figure and is infused with the golden glow of Italian sunlight.A similar watercolour of the same place from a different viewpoint is in the collection of the Graves Art Gallery Sheffield (see R. Lister Catalogue Raisonné of the works of Samuel Palmer, 1988, no. 311, pp. 126-7, ill.). In a letter to her parents, written during August 1838, Hannah Palmer mentioned two views of Corpo di Cava by her husband. Presumably one is the Graves Art Gallery drawing and the present work may be the second which Raymond Lister records as untraced (R. Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge 1988, see no. 310).

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.

Sir Gerald Festus Kelly, P.R.A. (British 1879-1972)The Great Wall of ChinaOil on boardExhibitedMartyn Gregory Gallery, ‘Modern British Painters’, October 1988, Catalogue no. 52, no. 34This is a study for a painting of the same size of the Great Wall of China exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, 1938, no.45 and the Royal Academy, London, Exhibition of Works by Sir Gerald Kelly, 1957, no.231.Born in London of Irish descent, Kelly was educated at Cambridge University, later living and studying art in Paris where he met Degas, Monet, Renoir and Sickert. Whistler was also an early influence as were Cézanne and Gaugin. Kelly was an enthusiastic traveller, visiting amongst other countries China, Spain, America, South Africa and Burma, where he painted some of his most characteristic and charming figure studies. He became a successful society portraitist whose sitters included Somerset Maugham, whom he painted several times, and he undertook numerous state portraits. Kelly is represented in many public collections, including the Tate, which holds seven works. He had retrospective exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries in 1950 and in 1957 at the RA. He was elected RA in 1930, was the Academy's Keeper from 1943-45 and President, defeating Augustus John in the election, from 1949-54. Kelly held a number of official positions, such as membership of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, 1938-43, and was knighted in 1945. Between 1909 and 1970 Kelly exhibited over 300 works at the RA. During his lifetime his work became well known through popular prints.

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 l.c.: E. Lear, pencil with watercolour, pen and black ink and touches of gold17.7 x 23 cm.; 7 x 9 inchesThese charming, quirky drawings are characteristic early works by Lear, dating from the late 1820s or early 1830s when he was establishing himself as an ornithological artist. They relate to a group of drawings which Lear gave to Mrs Godfrey Wentworth, who supported his employment by the Zoological Society in 1831, and whom he credited with launching him as an artist. They are imaginary, fanciful subjects drawn with not a little humour, resembling the stylised watercolours of birds painted on late eighteenth century porcelain. Robert McCracken Peck has made the interesting suggestion that Lear and his sister Ann may have been thinking of approaching ceramics companies with them (see Robert McCracken Peck, The Natural History of Edward Lear, 2016, pp. 27-9).Two surviving family albums from the late 1820s, containing a mixture of similar natural history subjects by Edward Lear and his sisters Ann and Sarah, are in the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University (MS Typ 55.4 and 55.27).Sir Edward Strachey was a man of letters and friend of Lear’s, who wrote an introduction to Nonsense Songs in 1895. He lived at Sutton Court, Chew Magna in Somerset and was a neighbour of Lear’s close friend Chichester Fortescue, the Liberal politician whom Lear first met in Rome in 1845.

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.

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.