An album of early works including portraits, vegetables, flowers, studies of hands, feet and facial features, male figure studies drawn from life and spiders, c. 1772-3MakerSarah Stone11161

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.

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Sarah Stone

An album of early works including portraits, vegetables, flowers, studies of hands, feet and facial features, male figure studies drawn from life and spiders, c. 1772-3

William Henry Hunt OWS

Bruges – a group of women at the market

A portrait of the artist Benjamin Walter Spiers smoking in his studioMakerG W (fl. late 19th century)11209

Signed and inscribed verso: Far away in Cloudland/BWSpiers/And when the smoke ascends on high/Then thou behold'st the vanity of worldly stuff/Gone with a puff/thus think, and smoke tobacco-/G.W.-Smoking Spiritualised, watercolour over pencil heightened with gum arabic and touches of white, and further inscribed on original backing: B.W. Spiers Far Away13.5 x 18cm; 5 1/2 x 7 1/8 inchesBenjamin Walter Spiers (1845-1894) was an idiosyncratic painter of studio still lives who lived in London, at 70 Hereford Road in Bayswater, where the current watercolour may have been drawn. He crammed his antiquarian pictures with books, furniture, objects and paintings a number of which reappear in several of his still lifes. He often drew corners of interiors of his favourite antique shops in London’s Wardour Street. The bust and the chair shown in the present work appear in several of his compositions. He was captured here by an artist with the initials G W who has caught him relaxing with a cigarette in his studio. Spiers often penned a verse to accompany a picture, as in the present work.It is amusing seeing the tables turned and the artist drawn as the subject of his own studio interior. Spiers’ extraordinary fidelity in his own painting and his eclectic taste makes him the leading exponent of a particular type of 19th century interior painting. The dealer and scholar Christopher Wood considered him to be ‘one of the most remarkable painters of still-life in English Art’ (see C. Wood, ‘Knicknacks and silly Old Books’, 'Country Life', 10 June 1993, pp. 124-125).Christie’s London had a large group of Spiers work for sale on 14 December 2016. In one of these works 'Worthless old knickknacks and silly old books', based on the poem 'The Cane-Bottom'd Chair' by Thackeray, the same painting of Gainsborough's (lost) 'Cottage Children', which hangs over the fireplace in the present work, can be seen.Spiers was interested in possessions rather than objects of nature and his curiosity for antiquarian objects, books, maps, prints and china is displayed with trompe-l’oeil accuracy in his watercolours. The same objects repeatedly appear which suggests that Spiers owned them.Little is known about Spiers’ life. He lived in London, first at 17 Hereford Street, Bayswater, and then at Longwood in Acol Road, West Hampstead. He is thought to be related to Richard Phené Spiers, the architect, whose brother, Walter Spiers was a curator of the Soane Museum. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1876 to 1891, and 'The Times' Academy notice for 27 June 1881 says of his two exhibited works, ‘We consider these two works to be the gems of the water- colour gallery.’Christie’s London 14 December 2019, lot 80

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G W (fl. late 19th century)

A portrait of the artist Benjamin Walter Spiers smoking in his studio

Gustavo Mancinelli

Portrait of a young man

A man in Oriental dress, a minaret in the distanceMakerWilliam James Müller10888

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.

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William James Müller