Warwick Reynolds Prosperity

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).

Signed l.r.: W. HUNT, pencil, tiny sketches of figures and a list verso, on wove paper12 x 8.4 cm.; 7 ¼ x 4 ¾ inchesProvenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 370Exhibited: 'Hunt Exhibition Fry Collection', 1967, no. 17 (1)This drawing dates from circa 1820. Hunt drew the same girl on another occasion in a similar pose (Rossetti Collection, J. Witt, ibid. no. 492).

Pencil on laid paper, partially watermarked and countermarked 181914.5 x 10.9 cm.; 5 ¾ x 4 ¼ inchesProvenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 369Exhibited: 'Hunt Exhibition Fry Collection', 1967, no. 17 (2)This work dates from c. 1820.

Pencil26.5 x 18 cm.; 10 1⁄2 x 7 1/8 inchesProvenanceEstate of the artist (his daughter Henrietta Phipps), until 2000;Davis & Langdale Company, New York, 2000;Private collection, from 2000 until 2023Exhibited:Davis & Langdale Company, New York, 2000, Henry Lamb: Works on Paper, no. 13 [checklist]This compelling drawing was executed around 1930.Henry Lamb was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1883, shortly before his father moved the family to Manchester, where he spent his childhood. He studied medicine before abandoning this path to be an artist. At twenty-two he left for London to study under Augustus John and William Orpen at their Chelsea Art School.John was a particularly formative influence and Lamb moved to Paris with him a few years later. Lamb spent a couple of summers on the south coast of Brittany, in search of a more traditional way of life. This impulse drew Lamb to Gola Island in Northern Ireland two years later.In London in 1905, Lamb joined the Fitzroy Street Group and was a founding member of both the Camden Town Group and the London Group. He married Nina Forrest, or Euphemia, in 1906 but the marriage proved short-lived. He was friendly with the Bloomsbury Group, having known Vanessa Stephen and Clive Bell from his early days in London, but he often had little patience with them. He was close friends with the eminent critic and biographer Lytton Strachey and between 1912 and 1914 he painted his portrait, now held in the Tate and one of his greatest works.In the First World War, Lamb served as a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps in France, Salonika and Palestine; he was awarded the Military Cross. He was not an official war artist but drew extensively and the resulting oils are an important part of his oeuvre.In 1928 he married Lady Pansy Pakenham and moved to Coombe Bissett in Wiltshire. Lamb was appointed an official war artist for the Second World War, making portraits of soldiers and studies of servicemen at work across the South of England. Lamb was elected as an associate of the Royal Academy and a Trustee of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate at this time. He was finally awarded full membership of the Royal Academy in 1949.Interest in Lamb’s work has revived in recent years, and he has been the subject of recent exhibitions at Salisbury Museum and Poole Museum. His work can be found in many collections around the world, including the Tate, the Imperial War Museum, the Government Art Collection and the National Gallery of Canada.

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.

Pen and grey ink and grey wash over pencil24.5 x 17.1 cm.; 10 x 6 ¾ inchesProvenanceWith the Squire Gallery;J. Thursby-Pelham;Mrs Guy Argles and by descent until 1995, anon. sale Christie’s, London, 7 November 1995, lot 71;Spink, London;Christie’s, London, 21 November 2002, lot 8, where bought by the previous owner;Dreweatt’s, Château de Lasfonds sale, 16 November 2022, lot 143ExhibitedSpink, London, ‘Annual Exhibition of Watercolours and Drawings, 28 May – 21 June 1996, no. 4This imposing drawing shows Satan holding his shield aloft to defend himself against Heaven. Romney made many illustrations to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ around 1794. This drawing appears to show a moment in Book 1 when Satan and the other rebels are ‘Hurled headlong, flaming from the ethereal sky’. Elsewhere in the poem Milton compares Satan’s shield to a moon seen through Galileo’s telescope.Another similar drawing in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum also shows Satan holding his shield above his headhttps://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/16046It is possible that the French Revolution, raging at this time, was close to Romney’s mind when he worked on these drawings for 'Paradise Lost', giving them some contemporary political significance.

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 and dated l.r.: J.B. April 7 18.., pen and grey ink and grey wash16.2 x 21.2 cm.; 6 3/8 x 8 3/8 inchesLiteratureDr A. Sneddon, ‘Representing Magic in Modern Ireland, Belief, History and Culture,’, CUP, 2022, ill. fig. 1In Britain and Ireland amongst ordinary people popular belief in witches remained strong up until the twentieth century. This drawing appears to depict a consultation with a cunning person or white witch. A stock part of 18th and 19th century country life, these commercial, multifarious magical practitioners provided local communities with a range of services for a small fee, such as un-witching, fortune-telling, and divination. They could gain quite serious reputations and some prospered. The position gave them status in their local communities. The 'witch' seems to have a good-natured face and her bonnet is not peaked, and a cat is perched benignly on it. The old woman is seated, a horse skull above her chair and consulting a magical book or grimoire: the ownership of such expensive objects often added to the allure and kudos of cunning-folk. The family are approaching her in a deferential way (the man holds his hat, his wife looks expectant) to ask her help. The girl looks frightened, is she seeing the real witch, the cause of their maladies? After all, cunning-folk were often brought in to counter black or harmful magic.Boyne left Co. Down for London at the age of nine with his father and was apprenticed to the engraver William Byrne. He joined a company of strolling players until 1781 and thereafter established a drawing school.Boyne’s caricatures which provide an amusing insight into British contemporary life can be found in many public collections including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Fitzwilliam Museum and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.With thanks for Dr Andrew Sneddon for his comments on this drawing.

Inscribed (recto): T Von Holst, pencil and pen and brown ink, verso: pencil, on laid paper with a partial Strasburg Lily watermark, laid down on a brown sheet numbered 1027.2 x 21.4 cm; 10 3⁄4 x 8 1⁄2 inchesProvenanceJohn Welch Etherington Rolls (1807-1870);By family descent to Lady Shelley Rolls, her sale at Sotheby’s, London,12 June 1959;P. & D. Colnaghi;Private collection U.K. until 2019Von Holst’s drawing of the seated woman, recto, is after a figure in Raphael’s ‘Miraculous Draft of Fishes’; the drawing for the tapestry cartoon is in the Albertina, Vienna. A print was made after the drawing, which von Holst probably copied. The figure of the standing female on the recto is a characteristic Holst pose, derived from Vincenzo Danti’s bronze statue of Venus in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (see Max Browne, The Romantic Art of Theodor von Holst 1810-44, 1994, p.15).The drawing on the verso illustrates a scene inspired by a Gothic novel such as The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, published in 1794. One of the most popular novels of its day, its main character Emily St. Aubert, a virtuous and beautiful young woman, undertakes a series of dramatic adventures; she escapes from captivity at the hands of a cruel villain in a brooding castle to freedom.The brown card inlay on which the present drawing is contained is from the Rolls album, a large leather-bound album which forms the largest-known group of drawings by the artist. The family lived at The Hendre in Monmouthshire, where they also had at least five oils by von Holst. They were also involved with the theatre and opened their own in the grounds.The pencil inscription “T. Von Holst’ appears on almost all the drawings in the album and is effectively its collection mark.

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.