Evelyn De Morgan A study for Boreas and the Fallen Leaves, c. 1910 - 1914

Signed l.l.: W Muller/1839., oil on panel43.5 x 27 cm.; 17 x 10 5/8 inchesProvenanceThomas Agnew & Sons, London;Anonymous sale Sotheby’s, London, 10 November 1982, lot 49;Noortman & Brod, New York, 1983;Anonymous sale, Christie’s, New York, 10 February 1998 lot 160;Matthew Rutenberg, New York, until 2020ExhibitedNoortman & Brod, 18th and 19th Century Paintings, April – May 1983, New York, June - July 1983, LondonThis spirited painting executed with great bravura was done shortly after the artist’s return from Egypt in 1839. Müller arrived in Egypt by steamer in November 1838. He was one of the first established European artists to visit Egypt and was there at the same time as David Roberts, although neither knew of the other’s presence there.Müller was exhilarated by his arrival in the bustling metropolis of Cairo and was particularly intrigued by the slave market, which he described as ‘one of my most favourite haunts’ (W. J. Müller, ‘An Artist’s Tour of Egypt’, Art-Union 1, London, 1839, pp. 131-2).Müller is the best-known artist of the Bristol School. His German father settled in the city and was the first curator of the Bristol Institution, the forerunner of the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. His early exposure to art led to a short apprenticeship with James Baker Pyne and a friendship with the Reverend James Bulwer (1749-1879), a pupil of John Sell Cotman, whose collection of Norwich School drawings Müller would have known.In 1833 Müller was one of the founders of the Bristol Sketching Club and his travels began the following year with visits to Holland, Germany and Venice. His 1838 trip started in Athens before he continued to Cairo. In 1840 he visited France and in 1843 he went to Lycia at the same time as Sir Charles Fellows’ expedition, during which he produced some of his finest watercolours. He died at the age of 43 after his return from Turkey.Following Müller’s death, prices of his oil paintings rose dramatically in the salerooms. Articles on his work appeared regularly and in 1875 N. Neal Solly, the biographer of David Cox, wrote a long biography. In 1896 the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery held a retrospective of 192 of Müller’s paintings, watercolour and drawings. His reputation was kept alive in Bristol where the 150th anniversary of his birth in 1962 was celebrated with an exhibition at Bristol Art Gallery, while in 1984 Tate Gallery held a show of his French and Lycian watercolours. In 1991 a major retrospective was held at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, who hold the most comprehensive collection of his work, organised by Francis Greenacre, the renowed authority on Müller and the Bristol School.

Inscribed l.r.: Bruges, watercolour7.6 x 11.4 cm; 3 x 4½ inchesProvenanceSpink & Son Ltd, London, K3/1890b, part of a group purchased from Appleby Brothers, 2 August 1960.This spontaneous, on-the-spot sketch was presumably done when Cox visited Bruges in 1826. His first trip to the Continent was organised by his brother-in-law Mr Gardener, an agent for the sale of government ordnance maps who had premises at 163 Regent Street, London. Gardener persuaded Cox and his son David Cox Jr to accompany him on a business trip to Brussels. The party travelled from Dover to Calais and then, travelling by diligence, on to Dunkerque, Bruges and Brussels. Cox evidently liked the caps worn by the market women in Belgium as he sketched them again in Brussels.1 1.See N. Neil Solly, Memoir of the Life of David Cox, 1873, reprinted 1973, p. 49.

Signed with initials l.r., pen and brown ink14.5 x 12 cm.; 5 ½ x 4 ¾ inchesProvenance:Mrs F.L. Evans;With Colnaghi, 1951, catalogue no. 59Duncan Beresford-Jones until 2000The Shah of Persia presented a group of Arabian horses to the Prince Regent, commemorated in a painting of 1819 by H.B. Chalon (Tate Britain, TO2357). Landseer was also attracted to the subject and two versions of oils of an Arabian stallion with an Attendant in Persian dress are known, see Richard Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, 1982, p. 54.The Shah sent an Ambassador, Mirza Abdul Hassan Shiraz, to London in 1819 to discuss with Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, aspects of the Anglo-Persian treaty concluded by Sir Gore Ouseley in Tehran in 1812, and more recently revised. That treaty had established an Anglo-Persian alliance against a possible Franco-Russian one and the Shah was hoping for positive assurances that England would protect Persia in the event of a Russian invasion.The Ambassador left Tehran in October 1818 laden with presents from the Shah, including eighteen selected Arabian horses for the Prince Regent. The horses travelled with the Ambassador to Constantinople and then the British government organised their transport to London, an expensive undertaking arranged by a Mr George Willcox and costing over £1500. The presentation of the Shah’s gifts was listed in The Times of 24 May and took place at Carlton House, the Prince Regent’s London residence. There are seven horses pictured in Chalon’s painting, and it is not known how many of them survived the journey, but the present drawing presumably shows one of them.Mirza Abdu Hassan Shiraz’s visit aroused considerable social and popular attention but the visit was not a success, as following the defeat of Napoleon and the conclusion of an alliance with Russia the British no longer attached much importance to their Persian alliance.

One hundred and forty-four drawings on sixty-eight pages, laid into an album bound in vellum, the fly leaf with a large label inscribed: Miss Stones/First Efforts/plates.71The drawings are of various sizes, on laid paper, each page 31.5 x 19.7 cm.; 12 1⁄4 x 7 3⁄4 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K.;Private sale by Sotheby’s Australia, January 25 2001; Patrick Dockar-Drysdale (1929-2020)ExhibitedTate Britain, 'Now you See Us- Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920', May - October 2024, ill. p.42, p. 205Sarah Stone was the daughter of James Stone, a fan painter and is thought to have assisted her father. The family lived in London.The dated drawings in this album suggest that Stone executed many of them when she was ten or eleven years old and identify her as something of a child prodigy. This album contains many copies from drawing books which were a popular means of allowing an artist to develop their technique by copying. The number of drawings and the repetition of certain subjects reflect a systematic approach and a determination to improve and there are drawings after Holbein, Ribera and Boucher, the minor details may be after Le Brun.One of the drawings is inscribed ‘The New Drawing Book‘ which could be a reference to Francis Vivares, A New Drawing Book, in the Manner of Chalk fit for Youth to Draw after. 6 sepia soft ground etchings, by W. Hebert after Vanloo and Boucher, 4to. Frans. Vivares. Sept. 1759. The plates in this were in the manner of red chalk.The range of subjects in the present album suggests Stone was using one of the compilation drawing books, such as Carrington Bowles, The School of Art; or, most compleat Drawing-Book extant: consisting of an extensive series of well chosen examples, selected from the designs of those eminent masters, Watteau, Boucher, Bouchardson, Le Brun, Eisen, &c. engraved on sixty copper plates, and performed in a method which expresses the manner of handling the chalk, 1765 and later editions.

Inscribed with artist’s shorthand and dated 35 c.r., pencil7.2 x 15.1 cm.; 2 ¾ x 5 7/8 inchesProvenanceThe Manning Galleries Ltd., January 1972;Private collection until 2023

Pencil on laid paper15 x 17.5 cm.; 6 x 7 ¼ inchesProvenanceSabin Galleries Ltd., “The Sublime and Beautiful’, 1973, no. 88The artist was an architect and surveyor as well as an artist, the fifth and youngest son of the architect George Dance the Elder, from a family of architects, artists and dramatists. His brother Nathaniel Dance (Dance-Holland) was also a painter and later a politician. Both brothers were founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. There has been confusion over the authorship of some of the caricatures with which both brothers are associated.

Pencil and black and red chalk, in original frame42 x 34.5 cm.; 16 ½ x 13 5/8 inchesProvenance: With Dorothy Roberts, Lincoln, 1996;Acquired by the previous owner in May 1996 from Douglas Turner;Private collection U.K. until 2021Literature: Kenneth Garlick, ‘A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Pastels of Sir Thomas Lawrence’ in The Walpole Society; 1962–64, xxxix, 1964, p. 244This unpublished drawing by Lawrence is an addition to a group of three known portraits of Munia.Lawrence became friendly with the Angerstein family in about 1790, when John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823) took charge of his financial affairs. Lawrence did paintings and drawings of most of the family, which included John Julius’ son, John Angerstein, M.P. (1772/3–1858), who married, in 1799, Amelia Lock, daughter of William Lock, who was also a friend and patron of Lawrence. Isabel Smith, or Munia, was nurse to the couple’s five children at Woodlands, the family residence which John Julius had built at Blackheath in 1770s. She was described as Russian in the papers of Miss May Rowley, a direct descendant of Elizabeth Julia Angerstein, daughter of John Julius. (Archive reference number NG14/230/1).This smaller version of this composition (measuring 35.5 x 30.25 cm; 14 x 11 15/16 inches) from May Rowley is now in the collection of Tate (T00768). The Tate drawing is inscribed on the back ‘This is a drawing of my Nurse Isabel Smith, called Munia, buried at Nh Willingham Lincolne. Wm Angerstein, drawn by Sr Thos Lawrence at Woodlands’. The Tate drawing originally belonged to Elizabeth, John Angerstein’s daughter, and was bequeathed to the nation in 1965 by May Rowley, who had inherited it from her grandfather Richard Freeman Rowley, Elizabeth’s husband.A second version, the same larger size as the present drawing, is in the possession of Viscount Daventry at Arbury, and was exhibited at Bristol City Art Gallery, ‘Exhibition of works by Sir Thomas Lawrence P.R.A.’, 1951, no. 48.Garlick records a further smaller version of this subject measuring 35.6 x 30.2 cm as being in the possession of Miss Keightley in 1925. She inherited the drawing from her father Archibald Keightley who was Lawrence’s executor. This drawing, in poor condition, is now in the Royal Academy (LAW/3/1). This work was illustrated in R.Brimley Johnson, Mrs Delaney, 1925, rep. facing p. 256 (incorrectly called Mrs Delaney).The financier and philanthropist John Julius Angerstein was born in St Petersburg in 1735 to a German family who had settled in Russia. He emigrated to England in about 1749 and built a fortune, partly from a career in the City of London, developing Lloyd’s insurance business. An active philanthropist, he was a patron of Lawrence’s and the artist advised him on his picture acquisitions together with Benjamin West. Angerstein started collecting around 1790.On Angerstein’s death the British Government purchased thirty-eight of his pictures and took over the lease of his Pall Mall town house. The public was able to view the collection here before the National Gallery, founded in 1824, was constructed in Trafalgar Square and it formed the nucleus of the gallery’s collection. Four paintings from the Pall Mall house were not purchased, a Reynolds portrait of Angerstein’s first wife and their first child, and three Fuseli paintings after Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’which were returned to Angerstein’s heirs, and which remained at Woodlands until 1870.For further information about Woodlands and the collection kept there see Susanna Avery-Quash, ‘The lover of the fine arts is well amused with the choice pictures that adorn the house’: John Julius Angerstein’s ‘other’ art collection at his suburban villa, Woodlandshttps://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/33/3/fhx055/4773890 (Journal of the History of Collections, Volume 33, Issue 3, November 2021, fhx055, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhx055See also Anthony Twist, A Life of John Julius Angerstein, 1735–1823: Widening circles of finance, philanthropy, and the arts in eighteenth-century London (London, 2006).

Head and shoulders, pen and brown ink and wash22.9 x 17.3 cm; 9 x 10 3/4 inchesProvenance: Private collection, UK, bought at a charity auction at the Finchingfield GuildhallLandseer’s caricatures are a less well-known aspect of his art. They were made for private circulation and show Landseer’s effortless ability to capture the physical oddities of his subjects in an acute yet affectionate fashion. This drawing was once thought to depict Paganini but the subject is currently unidentified.

Signed with initials on border l.r.: F .Y (?) M, and inscribed l.c.: Female Hottentot watercolour on wove paper, with a laid paper borderDrawing size 20.6 x 15.3 cm.; 8 ½ x 6 inches, with border 26 x 20 cm.; 10 ¼ x 7 7/8 inchesThis drawing came from a now disbound English album which contained works on paper from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Henry Lamb (Australian/British 1883 – 1960)Inscribed l.r.: Edwin John, pencilProvenanceThe Estate of the artist;Davis & Langdale Company, New York (DLA 3328);Where purchased by Sarah John (1946 - 2024);Bequeathed to the present ownerThis drawing dates from c. 1913-1915. Edwin John (1905-1978) was the fourth son of Augustus John and Ida and was born in Paris. After a brief career as a middleweight boxer he became a watercolourist. He inherited the estate of his aunt Gwen and did much to secure her posthumous reputation.Henry Lamb was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1883. He studied medicine in Manchester before abandoning it in1905 to train as an artist. At twenty-two he left for London to study under Augustus John and William Orpen at their Chelsea Art School at 72 Flood Street. They held weekly classes in life drawing and painting, still life, figure composition, landscape and decorative painting.He was a talented student and he and John formed a strong friendship. For a while Lamb imitated John’s bohemian manner of dress, wore gold earrings and grew his hair longer. He also began to draw like John. Lamb was a frequent visitor to the John household into 1930s and became close to Dorelia (with whom he had an affair) and to the children who he encouraged to draw.This drawing also has echoes of the work of Stanley Spencer. Spencer (like John) had studied at the Slade from 1908-1912 under Henry Tonks. Lamb and Spencer met in 1913 and were close friends for a while. Another drawing of Edwin from this period was with Piano Nobile in 2024 (Augustus John and the First Crisis of Brilliance, 26 April –13 July 2024, no. 12).