Trees (SOLD)

TreesDated l.r.: July 27. 1833, pen and grey ink and wash35 x 23.5 cmThis is a charming example of White Abbott’s celebrated and ‘modern’ style of drawing, with its use of clear pen and ink outline and flat washes, derived from the style of his teacher Francis Towne. A Devonian with a particular love of trees, the artist exhibited from time to time in London as an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Arts, but he never sold any of his work.This may well be a view of Fordland, the estate in Devon not far from Exeter which he inherited from his uncle James White, the lawyer and fellow pupil of Francis Towne, in 1825.White Abbott’s work can be found in many public collections, including the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, the Ashmolean, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

Signed and inscribed l.l.: S.R. Badmin/A wooded bank, inscribed with title and dated 1967 below the mount, watercolour over traces of pencil17.5 x 19.5 cm.; 6 7/8 x 7 ¾ inchesExhibitedRoyal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1967, no. 109Private collection, U.K. until 2024

Signed and dated l.r.: Edward Bawden/1948, pen and grey ink and watercolour46 x 59 cm.; 18 x 23 inchesProvenanceMiss N.B. Allen, purchased in 1949 from the Leicester Galleries, London;Spink, K3 10536;Private collection, U.K. until 2022ExhibitedLeicester Galleries, London: ‘Works by Edward Bawden CBE, ARA’, February 1949, no. 1Bawden lived in Great Bardfield in Essex from the 1930s to 1970 and was a central figure of the Great Bardfield Artists.

Signed l.r., watercolour28 x 12 cm

Signed and inscribed l.l.: ?H….s Oak, W(?)…Forest June ME Cotman, pencil24.5 x 34 cm.; 9 5/8 x 13 3/8 inchesOak trees were a subject frequently drawn by J.S. Cotman and Miles Edmund. It has been suggested that this tree bears a resemblance to Kett’s Oak near Wymondham.

Signed l.l.: M E Cotman/April 23 1827, inscribed l.r.: Raby Park Durham/E of Darlingtons, pencil34.5 x 24 cm.; 13 ½ x 9 3/8 inchesProvenanceDr Henry Lowe and Judy Lowe (née) Cotman until 2023

Pastel13.7 x 22 cm.; 5 3/8 x 8 ¾ inchesPrivate collection, U.K. until 2024

i A figure with a pitcher near a cottage with two donkeysOil on varnished laid paper30 x 39 cm; 113⁄4 x 153⁄8 inchesii A woodland cottage with cows near a pondOil on varnished laid paper with traces of pencil30.5 x 44.6 cm; 12 x 171⁄2 inchesiii A wooded landscape with a herdsman and cows near a cottageOil on varnished laid paper25 x 34 cm; 93⁄4 x 133⁄8 inchesiv A landscape with a herdsman and cowsOil on varnished laid paper with traces of pencil29.5 x 37 cm; 115⁄8 x 141⁄2 inchesSold (iv)Provenance:John Mayheux (d. 1839); General Arthur Easton (1863–1949); By whom bequeathed to his godson Major C. G. Carew Hunt (d. 1980);With Michael Harvard by 1959; With Edward Speelman; Brian Jenks, his sale, Sotheby’s, London, 27 June 1973, lot 46; Where acquired by the father of the previous owner, by descent until 2018.Exhibited : Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, Festival of Britain 'Gainsborough Exhibition', 1951.Literature: John Hayes, 'The Landscape Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough', 1982, vol. 1, pp. 196 and 231, no. 24, illus. plate 262 (landscape with herdsman and cows).These virtuoso oil sketches are from a larger group of about thirteen done by Gainsborough Dupont, Thomas Gainsborough’s nephew, pupil and studio assistant, and were thought to be by Gainsborough until John Hayes positively identified the hand of Dupont. Five of this group are in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, two are in the Henry E. Huntingdon Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, and two are at Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury. Eight were sold at Sotheby’s, London, in June 1973, including the present examples.Hayes describes these oil sketches on paper as amongst Gainsborough Dupont’s finest works, splendidly fluent, richly painted, these decorative compositions, with their surface emphasis and animation, are a fine late expression of the rococo (Hayes, op. cit., p. 231). He notes that they are Dupont’s most personal and distinctive contribution to the genre, and of historical interest as oil sketches clearly intended as finished compositions for display. The group exemplifies what Hayes described as Dupont’s latter-day rococo emphasis on decorative picturemaking: on surface pattern, rhythmic forms and line, and brilliant, often darting or flickering effects of light (ibid., p. 191). The two unfinished landscapes illustrate how the artist painted confidently directly on to paper with oils, sometimes with pencil underdrawing.The first reference to Gainsborough Dupont’s landscapes appears to have been in 1792 when the journalist Bate-Dudley, who was well informed about the workings of Gainsborough’s studio, records that some beautiful little studies of rural nature have also lately employed this Artist’s pencil ('Morning Herald', 9 March 1792; see Hayes, op. cit., pp. 188–9 and 235). Philip Thicknesse, one of Gainsborough’s oldest friends, notes 'at the end of his brief life of Gainsborough that Dupont was a man of exquisite genius, little inferior in the line of a painter to his uncle ... either as a landscape or Portrait painter' (ibid., pp. 187 and 302). Mrs Bell noted that his original works were chiefly landscapes ('Thomas Gainsborough', London, 1897, p. 66).Gainsborough Dupont was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, on 24 December 1754, the third son of Philip Dupont and Thomas Gainsborough’s sister Sarah. In the 1760s Dupont was sent to Bath to be raised by his aunt Mary Gibbon, the recently widowed sister of Thomas and Sarah, who set up a millinery shop there beside her brother’s studio in 1762. On 12 January 1772, Dupont was formally apprenticed to Gainsborough, the older man’s first and only studio assistant, and worked for him for sixteen years. Dupont was painted by his uncle four times in the early 1770s (see David Solkin et al., 'Gainsborough’s Family Album', National Portrait Gallery, London, 2018, nos 26, 32& 48 and fig. 36). On 6 March 1775, some nine months after the Gainsboroughs moved to London, Dupont joined the Royal Academy Schools. After his formal training he worked in his uncle’s studio in Schomberg House, Pall Mall, and continued to live at his home there, where he learned to scrape mezzotints and made small copies in oil after his uncle’s portraits. In 1784, Gainsborough asked him to copy a portrait of Queen Caroline to accompany a portrait of her husband George II by John Shackleton in Huntingdon Town Hall. After Gainsborough’s death on 2 August 1788, his nephew had the opportunity to develop his own practice.Dupont continued to work in the studio at Schomberg House. Portrait commissions came, notably from George III, who admired his work, and from some of the children of his uncle’s friends. In 1793 he was given his most prestigious commission, to paint a huge canvas, larger than any his uncle had painted, of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House: thirty-one figures placed across a canvas nine and a half feet tall and nearly nineteen feet wide. The group portrait – commissioned to decorate the newly completed headquarters of Trinity House on Tower Hill – took three years to complete. In 1794 Thomas Harris (d. 1820), a theatrical proprietor, commissioned a series of spirited portraits of actors that are, with a few exceptions, now in the Garrick Club, London. Dupont was also a painter of landscapes (see catalogue by John Hayes, op. cit., pp. 192–6) and he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1790 to 1795.Hayes notes that the dating of Dupont’s landscapes is problematic, but that there does appear to be a progression from a grand, slightly stiff manner, through a poetic, pastoral kind of landscape, linking with Gainsborough’s smaller late works, to a more fluent, vigorous and dramatic style, possibly influenced by Lawrence. This group fits into his later oeuvre.John Mayheux, the first owner of these pictures, was an assistant at the Board of Control, under Lord Melville, which oversaw the activities of the East India Company from London.

Black chalk with stump over pencil on laid paper27.8 x 38.9 cm; 11 x 15¼ inchesProvenance: Arthur Kay (1861–1939), Edinburgh; Edith Oliver (1894–1972); By descent until sold at Christie’s, London, 11 November 1997, lot 7; David Stokes, London; Private collection, UK, until 2018.Literature: Hugh Belsey, 'A Second Supplement to John Hayes’s ‘The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough’, no. 1086, Master Drawings, Vol. 46, No. 4, ‘Drawings by Gainsborough’ (Winter, 2008), pp. 427–541.This drawing probably dates from the mid 1780s. The comparatively free handling of the forms is similar to a group of other drawings of this date (see Belsey, op. cit., nos. 1074 and 1077–92). Arthur Kay, the first recorded owner of this work, owned a group of drawings by Gainsborough, some of which were sold at Christie’s on 23 May 1930, although it has not been possible to precisely identify the present drawing as one of these.

KT453AGeorge Garrard, ARA (1760-1826)Hyde Park from the artist’s painting room window at Knightsbridge, 1793Inscribed verso: Hidepark from Knightsbridge/D Room 1793, inscribed on a label: Hyde Park from the Artists painting room window at Knightsbridge 1793., oil on laid paper16.2 x 20 cm.; 6 3/8 x 7 7/8 inchesProvenanceMr Nicholson, Oxford, until 1942, when acquired byEdward Croft-Murray, CBE, (1907-1980);Jill Croft-Murray until 2020;Woolley and Wallis, The Edward Croft-Murray Collection, 11 August 2021, lot 421ExhibitedArts Council of Great Britain, ‘Paintings from Nature; The Tradition of Open air Oil Sketching’, 1980, cat. no. 40This delightful oil sketch originally came from an album of oil sketches from nature, assembled by the artist for his own pleasure, inscribed ‘Studies from nature by G. Garrard’. Garrard’s painting room was in the hamlet of Knightsbridge, overlooking Hyde Park. Its spontaneity and the looseness of the brush strokes is suggestive of a plein air sketch, although we know that it was painted through the window of Garrard’s drawing room which was evidently very close to the park.This sketch would have been produced as an aide memoire for the artist and is typical of the type of work which was produced in the late 18th century neither for exhibition nor sale but as a means of understanding nature. The rediscovery of the genre has been explored in the exhibition ‘Truth to Nature Open air Painting In Europe 1780-1870’, 2020.Five further examples of his oil sketches in and around London are in the collection of Tate Gallery and another of Woburn Park in the Higgins Museum, Bedford, donated by Edward Croft-Murray, the previous owner of the present work.Garrard came from a family of artists who were descended from Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (c.1561-1636). He was a pupil of Sawrey Gilpin (1733-1807) whose daughter Matilda he married. He studied at the R.A. Schools from 1778 and was a frequent exhibitor there from 1783-1826, becoming an ARA in 1800. Garrard specialised in animal portraiture and sculpture, but also painted landscapes, portraits and urban views. From 1795 he worked increasingly as a sculptor.He died in Brompton, then a village next to Knightsbridge. where many artists lived.

Signed and dated l.r.: Laura Knight/1958, graphite and black chalk on paper partially watermarked J WHATMAN, framed in a black painted frame25.5 x 36 cm.; 10 x 14 inchesFramed size 43.5 x 56 cm.; 17 1/8 x 22 inchesThe apparent Japanese influence on this drawing can also be seen in an oil of a tree with a landscape entitled ‘A Misty Sunrise’ painted in 1956 and in the collection of the Royal Academy (03/1161). Knight had a lifelong interest in trees and landscape.This drawing may have been done in the Malvern Hills where the artist and her husband Harold spent some time in the summer of 1958.

Signed and dated l.lr.: Edward Lear del./1838, pencil and black chalk heightened with white on green paper24.7 x 40.5 cm.; 9 ¾ x 16 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K. until 2025Lear set out for Italy in the summer of 1837. For most of the next ten years the artist wintered in Rome and toured other parts of Italy during the summer. This delicately drawn sheet shows the influence of James Duffield Harding. The carefully drawn trees are probably in the Roman Campagna.

Watercolour with gum arabic, inscribed on original label on reverse of mount: Burnham Beeches/F.R. Lee 185132.2 x 49.5 cm; 12 5/8 x 19 1⁄2 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K. until 2022The artist was born in Barnstaple, Devon and joined the Royal Academy Schools in 1818. He lived in Kent for a while before returning to Devon in the 1840s, having been elected a Royal Academician in 1838. Nature was his enduring inspiration and he enjoyed considerable commercial success in his own lifetime. The extensive use of gum arabic by the artist in this work creates the effect of an intense greenwood which makes an interesting comparison with the oils on paper in this catalogue.Lee collaborated with contemporaries such as Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) and Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803-1902), providing the backgrounds for paintings in which they painted the figures or animals.Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire is an historic area of largely beech and oak woodland which has been regularly pollarded, with many trees which are several hundreds of years old. An area of outstanding natural beauty, the woods were popular with nineteenth century artists.

Signed and dated l.c.: Amelia Noel 1795, watercolour over pencil with scratching out46.6 x 66.5 cm; 18 G x 26 ¼ inchesProvenance : Michael Bryan Fine Art; From whom purchased by the present owner in 1985; Private collection, UK. Exhibited : Probably at the Royal Academy, 1795, no. 429, ‘a drawing’.A most interesting and resourceful Jewish artist, who had an American father, Noel exhibited landscapes, historical works and other undescribed drawings which were probably watercolours at the Royal Academy between 1795 and 1804. The large size of the present work suggests it is highly likely to have been an exhibition watercolour.Amelia Noel was drawing mistress to the daughters of George III. She also worked from 38 St James’s Place, London, and advertised instruction to ladies in drawing & painting (in oil, water colours and crayons) landscapes, figures, cattle, flowers, transparencies &c , at two guineas for twelve monthly lessons. 1 She also, together with her daughter Frances, gave lessons in painting on velvet.Noel was also an engraver and publisher and made a series of topographical etchings of Kent views which she published in 1797 and dedicated to Princess Charlotte. She presented a set of these to Princess Elizabeth (Royal Collection). The Royal Collection also has a series of copies by Princess Sophia after Noel’s prints of views of Kent.Noel’s elegant premises at 32 Albemarle Street impressed contemporaries: The elegant and scientific works of this lady for her superior talents and genius, are patronized by the royal family, nobility, &c. They may be viewed gratis, and consist of paintings and drawings in oil, water colours, crayons, and chalks; and the grandeur, taste, and spirit, of the ancient masters are admirably preserved. The apartments are fitted up after the French, Turkish, and Chinese, style, decorated with ornamental paintings, by Mrs Noel. The chairs, sophas, borders, draperies, &c. are all of painted velvets, executed in a manner peculiarly tasteful, and exclusively her own, and consist of historical figures, landscapes, &c. the recesses are painted in imitation of bronzes, basso reliefs, cameos, and marbles; and the window blinds and screens are transparent paintings. A Turkish saloon, a Chinese Boudouin, and a French salle, form a most pleasing and unique coup d’œil. Mrs Noel and daughter engage to teach ladies, in a few lessons, these arts, by a manner peculiarly easy, and unclogged by the usual methods of protraction . 2Joseph Farington’s diary records Noel’s networking abilities and personal charm. She visited him with her daughter Frances on 8 April 1804 to ask for his support in having her work accepted and well placed at the Royal Academy that year, as the previous year it had been rejected and damaged. She won over Farington, who agreed to help her. 3Amelia Noel was the daughter of Judah Levy, ‘an American merchant’, of Heydon Square, Minories (a chapman, whose bankruptcy is recorded in 1777). She married a Jew called Zebe or Zvi Noah, known as Henry Noel, in the synagogue in Duke’s Place, London, in 1781. His bankruptcy was recorded in 1783, 4 after which he appears to have run off with her money. Three children are recorded as having reached maturity: Noel’s artist daughter Frances Laura, later Mrs John Bell (1786–1863); Lewis Joseph John Noel (1784–1839), a solicitor; and Horace Morton Noel (1788–1814), Lieutenant in the 8th Foot, killed in the assault on Fort Erie in Canada.A nephew, Captain Uriah P. Levy, of the USS Vandalia, owned a portrait of her, said to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, at his home in Monticello. The American artist Mather Brown exhibited a portrait of Noel at the Royal Academy in 1797 (no. 75, described as ‘a lady’) and it has been suggested that the pair were romantically linked, although there is no firm evidence for this. 51. The Times, 19 October 1799.2. John Fetham, The picture of London, 1804, pp. 260ff.3. Joseph Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, republished 1978–1984.4. European magazine III.5. Dorinda Evans, Mather Brown, 1982, pp. 142 & 220. All references are cited in Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800 (online edition).

Inscribed and dated on fragments of the original mount attached to reverse of frame: Ruins of Clun Castle Montgomeryshire./June 24th. 1792, watercolour over pencil on paper watermarked J WHATMAN14.7 x 22.5 cm; 5 ¾ x 9 inchesFramed size 38.5 x 46 cm.; 15 ¼ x 18 inchesProvenanceLowell Libson Ltd, London, Watercolours and Drawings, 16 November – 9 December 2005, no. 16This drawing was part of a group on the market in 2005, many of which were views of Wales. Smith 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.

Signed l.r.: Reynolds Stone, pen and black ink and watercolour over traces of pencil, in original painted frame34.5 x 53 cm; 13 5/8 x 20 ¾ inchesFrame size 57 x 74 cm.; 22 ½ x 29 inchesProvenanceThomas Agnew & Sons; no. 167;Private collection, U.K., January 1963 - 2020In 1953 Stone and his family moved to the Old Rectory at Litton Cheney in Dorset, which was to be his home for the rest of his life. The garden and surrounding landscape proved to be a source of inspiration for his painting and engraving.

Signed and dated l.l.: F. Towne /1786, signed, inscribed and dated on reverse of original mount: Going to Hornsey, near London/Francis Towne 1786, pen and brown ink and watercolour14.5 x 18 cm.; 5 ¾ x 7 inchesProvenanceBequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744–1825), on whose death it passed to Towne’s residuary legatee John Herman Merivale (1779–1844) and his successors. Merivale’s granddaughter Emily Harriet Buckingham (1853–1923) inherited the drawing in 1915 and bequeathed it to her sister Frances Ann Laura Solly (b.1858). On 2 March 1936 she sold it to Agnew’s (no.1855) for £6, and they sold it (on 29 February 1936 according to Agnew’s) for £9 9s. to Miss N. Butler, who sold it back to Agnew’s (no.6038) on 7 October 1947 for £10. On 11 October 1949 Agnew’s sold it for £28 10s. to Gilbert Davis (1899–1983), who sold it at Sotheby’s on 19 May 1954, lot 39, for £20 to Agnew’s (no.7509), who sold it to Lieutenant Commander George Gosselin Marten of Crichel, Wimborne (d.1997). It was sold by a relative, F. W. Marten, at Christie’s on 3 March 1970, lot 102, for £441, and at Christie’s South Kensington on 28 January 2015, lot 758 where bought by Beaumont Nathan for Hugo Burge (1972-2023) for £8125. His sale at Lyon and Turnbull 19 March 2025, lot 75.LiteratureR. Stephens, A Catalogue Raisonné of Francis Towne (1739-1816) online, no. FT452.Richard Stephens suggests that this view of Hornsey may have been drawn while Towne was on his way to the Lake District in 1786.