British Women Artists (SOLD)

Alice Boyd (1823-1897)Capella di S. Clemente, S. Marco, VeniceInscribed and dated l.r.: Capella di S. Clemente S. Marco/21 June 1873., watercolour over pencil with touches of white35.3 x 25.5 cm.; 13 7/8 x 10 inchesThe artist painted this subject in oil, recorded in Ellen C. Clayton, English Female Artists, London 1876, Vol. 2, p. 41.From 26 May to 6 July 1873 Alice travelled through Europe with Bell Scott, his wife Letitia, William Michael Rossetti and Lucy Madox Brown. Their tour started in Chambéry, France and continued through Italy where they stopped in Venice on their way home.William Bell Scott drew a similar view in pencil from a slightly different angle, entitled The Interior of St Marks, now in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland (D4715.28B).

Signed with monogram l.r. and dated July 1875, watercolour over pencil with scratching out, the original mount inscribed: Steps to the Studio, Penkill/Steps that lead to pleasant days/And work that needs nor blame nor praise, in the original reeded frame31 x 22.2 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 5/8 inchesProvenanceBonhams London, 31 March 2021, lot 33Alice Boyd was one of the most talented women in the Pre-Raphaelite circle. In March 1859 she became a pupil of William Bell Scott who was Master of the Government School of Design in Newcastle. Her work has traditionally been overshadowed by Scott’s.Boyd and Scott fell in love, and, with his wife Letitia, divided their time between Penkill and the Scott's London home, living in a menage à trois.He first visited the ancestral home she shared with her brother Spencer Boyd in July 1860. In 1865, following Spencer’s death, Alice became laird of Penkill, the romantic castle perched on a promontory overlooking the Penwhapple burn five miles from Girvan in Ayrshire.Boyd painted several watercolours and oils outside her studio in the grounds of Penkill. She converted part of the stable block into a studio for herself and Bell Scott to use during the summer. The inscription on the original mount of the present work: Steps to the Studio, Penkill/Steps that lead to pleasant days/And work that needs nor blame nor praise, reflects a happy and productive working environment. The elaborately drawn peacock and roses and foliage, reminiscent of William Morris wallpaper, bear testament to the emerging Aesthetic movement.Boyd and Bell Scott entertained other members of the Pre-Raphaelite group at Penkill, and it was here that Dante Gabriel Rossetti found some solace in his most bleak moments of melancholia. The Penwhapple Burn inspired his poem The Stream's Secret, begun when he was staying at Penkill in 1869.His sister Christina delighted in the views of Ailsa Craig and the Clyde from the window in her turret bedroom and Alma-Tadema showered every morning in the freezing torrents of the Penwhapple waterfall. William Holman Hunt sent souvenirs to Penkill as gifts for Alice, Arthur Hughes was a frequent visitor and William Morris is believed to have designed four embroidered panels which hung in the passage from the banqueting hall. Penkill has been described as having a 'relaxed atmosphere of art and animals, whisky, friends and endless talk' (Country Life, 21 March 1991, p. 118).Penkill was a centre of the Pre-Raphaelites until 1885 when Bell Scott had an angina attack and was almost bedridden until his death five years later. Alice lived there for another seven years.Christie’s sold many of the contents on 15 December 1991 and the castle is now a private residence.

Signed l.l.: Emily Farmer, watercolour over traces of pencil with gum arabic and scratching out43 x 32 cm.; 15 17/18 x 12 5/8 inchesProvenanceSir Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne, Blackmoor House, HampshireExhibitedNew Society of Painters in Water Colours, 1860, no. 344; Winchester Art Loan Exhibition, 1875 (lent by Lord Selborne); Hiscock Gallery, Southsea, HampshireThis watercolour is the artist’s most famous work, executed in 1860, which was reproduced in different media. When it was exhibited in 1875 it was given special mention in The Hampshire Advertiser, June 23, 1874, p. 4, issue 3028: WINCHESTER ART LOAN EXHIBITION‘Lord Selborne-lent by his lordship- who has also a delightful picture “Deceiving Granny”, in which Emily Farmer, the artist has caught a scene thoroughly natural, and by no means rare, where a lovely girl and boy are being measured back to back by a loving grandmother, and the latter young rascal is rejoicing in gaining a half-inch over his merry sister by a surreptitious “tip toe”.’Emily Farmer exhibited over one hundred works at the New Society of Painters in Water Colours during her lifetime, achieving good notices from contemporary critics, but her work has fallen from public view like that of many other women artists.She was the daughter of John Biker Farmer who worked for the East India Company and his wife Frances Ann (née Frost). Like many women of her generation Emily was home educated and was taught art by her brother Alexander Farmer, the genre painter.Farmer’s early work was in miniature and she exhibited twice at the Royal Academy in 1847 and 1849 but from 1850 she began to concentrate on genre painting and developed her particular love of painting children.Farmer was elected to the New Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1854.Of a membership of fifty-seven artists in 1850 she was the tenth female member of the Society added four years later, the other nine being Fanny and Louisa Corbaux, Jane Egerton, Fanny Harris, Mary Margetts, Mrs William (Emma) Oliver, Sarah Setchell and Fanny Steers. She exhibited nearly one hundred works there, including the present watercolour, over the course of her artistic career.Pamela Nunn points out that although there was not much women’s work exhibited at the New Society’s exhibitions it was often regarded as the most interesting.1 Farmer was singled out for special mention by contemporary critics:“...Miss Farmer’s pictures, which are, all things considered, the best figure pieces in the collection. They are true in gesture and expression, conscientious in execution and harmonious in colour”, Spectator, May 3, 1862, p. 495.“Miss Farmer is the only figure artist (here) whose drawings give any hope or promise”..., ibid, April 28, 1866, p. 467.“Let us call attention to the two modest bits of Domestic by Miss Farmer, the best of that class in the room”, Critic, April 28, 1860, p. 351.Farmer also exhibited work at the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Water Colours and the Liverpool Academy.Emily Farmer lived for over half a century at Porchester House in Porchester, Hampshire where she died in 1905. She is buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Porchester.Examples of her work can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne (1812-1895), PC, FRCS, was an English lawyer and politician. He was appointed Solicitor General in Lord Palmerston’s government in 1861 and promoted to Attorney General in 1862.He handled many questions of international law which arose from the American Civil War including the Alabama Affair and was the leading counsel for Britain before the Alabama Claims tribunal in Geneva. In 1872 he was appointed Lord Chancellor under Gladstone, an office he held again from 1880-1885. He lived at Blackmoor House in Hampshire, built from 1865-1882 to the designs of Alfred Waterhouse. Two chairs and a hanging corner cupboard designed by Waterhouse for Blackmoor are now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Signed and inscribed l.r.: Laura Knight/1946, Nuremberg, charcoal and watercolour56 x 38 cm.; 22 x 15 inchesProvenanceSotheby’s, Olympia 4 July 2002, lot 237, where bought by the present owner;Private collection, U.K.ExhibitedLaura Knight: A Panoramic View, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, 9 October 2021-20 February 2022, ill. p. 190Knight suggested painting the Nuremberg Trial to the War Artists Advisory Committee in December 1945, and in early 1946 she flew to Frankfurt.The War Crimes Trial for Nazi war criminals was held in the Central Courts of Justice in Nuremberg. Knight attended the trial and made studies from a press box. She made several sketches for the finished oil (in the Imperial War Museum) and her letters to her husband Harold express the intense emotion generated at the Trial:‘I am trying my hardest for a dynamic and rather terrible build-up of the design, hoping that the placing of the masses, even apart from the detail, will convey in some way the sensation that not only I but everyone appears to feel… in it there is much pity- pity perhaps that the human creature could sink to such baseness as these poor creatures have done’.This drawing shows the back row of prisoners at the trial with Albert Speer, Konstantin von Neurath, Foreign Minister until 1938, and Hans Fritzche, the broadcaster and head of the radio division, at the very end of the row. Speer, Hitler’s favoured architect and Minister of Armaments was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment and Von Neurath to fifteen years. Fritzsche was acquitted.Hermann Goering was the end of the first row of prisoners with his own guard, next to Rudolph Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Streicher, Wilhelm Frick, Walther Funk and Hjalmar Schacht. At the other end of the back row, depicted in this drawing, sat Karl Doenitz, and next to him Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen and Arthur Seyss-Inquart.Two less finished sketches for the Nuremberg Trial are currently on loan to the Ben Uri Gallery, London.

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.r.: Laura Knight/Dec 1923, watercolour and black chalkSight size 41.2 x 33 cm.; 16 1⁄4 x 13 inchesWhole sheet 45.6 x 39.5 cm; 41.2 x 15 1⁄2 inches; 16 1⁄2 x 15 1⁄2 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K.ExhibitedMK Gallery, Milton Keynes, Laura Knight a panoramic view, 2021, ill. p. 144;Nottingham Castle Museum, Laura Knight & Caroline Walker: A Female Gaze, 2021 (no catalogue)LiteratureEd. Fay Blanchard & Anthony Spira, Laura Knight A panoramic view, 2022, ill. p. 144This striking work by Laura Knight was drawn in 1923 and is a notable example of her ‘female gaze’. Her portrait drawings of women are invariably strong and vital. Here, she adds emphasis with her trademark black chalk creating strong lines, which contrast with the vivid background in blue watercolour.It has been suggested that the sitter was Lilian Ryan, who was married to Sir Gerald Festus Kelly, one of the most fashionable society portraitists in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century and president of the Royal Academy from 1949 to 1954. During Kelly’s tenure as President, Lilian ‘Jane’ Ryan, as she was more commonly known, exhibited under the alias ‘Lilian Jelly’ to avoid accusations of cronyism.From a working-class family, Ryan (c.1898 – c.1980) had been a model for Sir George Clausen in the 1910s, and he introduced her to Gerald Kelly in 1916. They were to marry four years later and spend over fifty happy years together: indeed, Gerald painted her portrait at least fifty times, exhibiting each year at the Royal Academy and titling them ‘Jane,’ his nickname for his wife. Her many likenesses became so recognisable that when Queen Mary was introduced to her, she exclaimed “Jane, of the many Janes!”.Lilian took an interest in painting for herself in the early 1940s, and her husband encouraged her curiosity. She had a natural affinity to oils and she advanced quickly and exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1944, continuing to exhibit there for thirty years.In 1936 Laura Knight was the first woman to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1768. She battled against the structural inequalities of the art world throughout her professional life, from when she was excluded from the life room at Nottingham School of Art in 1891. In 1922 she wrote a pamphlet entitled Can Women Succeed as Artists where she identified inequality of opportunity as a major factor in the near exclusion of women from the arts in Britain. In 1937, she became the first woman to join the selection committee of the R.A., but was not invited to its annual banquet until 1967.Knight campaigned for greater recognition and status for women in the arts throughout her career and was President of the Society of Women Artists from 1932-1968. Throughout her life she took the opportunity to promote herself and her work, fight for equal renumeration and obtain high-profile commissions.

Signed l.r.: Laura Knight, watercolour over pencil 56 x 38 cm.; 22 x 15 inchesProvenancePolak Gallery, London;Christie’s, London, 23 June 1994, lot 9;Private collection U.K.;Sotheby’s, London, 13 December 2018, lot 85, where bought by the present ownerLiteratureJanet Dunbar, Laura Knight, 1975, ill. facing p. 104The subject of this watercolour is Eileen Mayo (1906-1994) depicted as a ballerina. Mayo was an artist and a favourite model of both Laura Knight and Dod Proctor. The work combines Knight’s frank depiction of the female form with her love of the stage and was drawn in the studio rather than at the theatre.Knight’s interest in ballerina’s dressing rooms started in 1919 when she was invited to draw Lopokova, the star of Diaghilev’s ballet at the Coliseum in No. 1 Dressing Room, which gives the present work its title. In her autobiography, Knight describes her fascination with the glow of the electric bulbs, the ballet shoes and the scent of powder and grease paint, and how she was allowed to sit and observe as much as she desired (L. Knight Oil Paint and Grease Paint, 1936, pp. 224-232).Knight worked on an oil of Mayo as a ballerina in 1927, entitled ‘Dressing for the Ballet’ and it was exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. The work was included in Knight’s touring exhibition of the United States in 1931 and was badly damaged, so she cut it down and completely repainted the original. The new composition called ‘No. 1 Dressing Room’, featuring Mayo topless in the identical pink tights and doing her hair in front of the mirror in an extended interior was re-exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1947 and bought by the Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool.Excluded from the life room at Nottingham School of Art in 1891, she battled against the structural inequalities of the art world throughout her professional life and fought for greater recognition and status for women in the arts throughout her career.In 1922 she wrote a pamphlet entitled Can Women Succeed as Artists where she identified inequality of opportunity as a major factor in the near-total exclusion of women from the arts in Britain. In 1936 Laura Knight was the first woman to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1768. She was President of the Society of Women Artists from 1932 to 1968. While she became the first woman to join the selection committee of the Royal Academy in 1937, Knight was not invited to its annual banquet until 1967.

Signed l.r.: EFlorence Mason, watercolour49.5 x 32.5 cm.; 19 ½ x 12 ¾ inchesThe artist, who was known as Florrie, was born in Birmingham, and raised in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, the daughter of Robert Crump Mason a dispensing chemist.Mason studied at the Royal College of Art in London and was influenced for a time by the Pre-Raphaelites. She painted portraits, oriental and Indian subjects, decorative pictures and also worked as an illustrator.The artist left London and returned to Bromsgrove where she had an established artist’s practise by the age of 30 and taught art for a time at Howell’s School, Llandaff, Cardiff. She lived in London again later in life.She travelled to India and for a time was Honorary Secretary of the Ceylon Society of Arts.Mason’s work was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the Royal West of England Academy, the Royal Institute, The Cardiff Art Society, and the Birmingham Art Gallery. In 1921 she exhibited four works at the Society of Women Artists.Kailasanathar Temple in Srivaikuntam, a village in Tamil Nadu 30 km from Tirunelveli, is dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. The Dravidian temple has three precincts. Shiva is worshipped as Kailasanathar and his consort Parvati as Sivakami. A granite wall surrounds the temple, enclosing all its shrines. The temple has an unusual flat gateway tower, unlike other South Indian temples that have a pyramidal entrance tower. The temple was originally built by Chandrakula Pandya Vijayanagar and Nayak kings commissioned pillared halls, sculptures and major shrines in the temple during the 16th century.

Signed and dated l.r.: Eliza Mayes/1861, watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour38.5 x 56.3 cm.; 15 ¼ x 22 1/8 inchesThe picturesque temple of Jupiter Panhellenius stands on Mount Panhellion and commands a view of the Saronic Gulf. It is dedicated to Aphaia, a goddess whose cult was only found at Aegina, and it is one of the loveliest late Archaic temples in Greece.In 1811 C.R. Cockerell and Baron Haller von Hallerstein excavated and found the fallen pedimental sculpture from the Temple dating from circa 510 to 490 BC. Seventeen statues which they excavated were acquired from them by Ludwig I of Bavaria and are today in the Glyptothek in Munich.The artist does not appear to be recorded but evidently enjoyed painting the blue sea and sky off Aegina.

Signed l.r.: JHP Bouverie, watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of white and gum arabic22.5 x 34 cm; 8 3/4 x 13 3/8 inchesProvenanceAugusta Raymond-Barker of Fairford Park, Gloucestershire, by family descent until 2016.Ampney Park is a late 16th century house. The large room on the south-west corner of the ground floor is a complete Jacobean survival with oak panelled walls with strapwork pilasters, elaborate plaster ceiling with pendant bosses, and a very large carved stone fireplace and overmantel with the figures and arms of the Pleydell family, the original owners of house till 1724.(David Verey, Buildings of England - Gloucestershire: the Cotswolds, 1979).The artist was the daughter of the 3rd Earl of Radnor born at Coleshill in Berkshire, and the wife of William Ellice (1816-1892) whom she married in 1847. She was a childhood friend of Princess Victoria with whom she was taken to play aged six and told by the young princess that she could not play with her toys and was not to address her by her christian name. She was one the Queen’s bridesmaids, the last survivor of the group, and wrote about it in the Cornhill Magazine of June 1897.Jane was actively involved in the temperance movement from the mid-1850s and chaired many meetings in London and elsewhere on the subject and was President of the Faringdon, Berkshire branch of the British Women’s Temperance Association. In 1887 Jane wrote a book titled ‘The shadow of a coming danger to the cause of temperance from the celebration of the Jubilee of Queen Victoria’ which highlighted the social problems caused by alcohol.There is a portrait of her after John Hayter in the Royal Collection and a portrait of Jane as a young girl was illustrated in the 23 June

Pen and brown ink and wash over traces of pencil, inscribed verso: Miss Selby/Netley Abbey18.5 x 23.5 cmThis drawing is reminiscent of the work of Heneage Finch (1751–1812), Viscount Guernsey, 4th Earl of Aylesford from 1777, whose lively penwork was his hallmark. The work of his siblings and children share this attribute, and it may be that Miss Selby knew one of them and was influenced by their style.Provenance: Augusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park, Gloucestershire; thence by family descent until 2016

KT496Signed l.c.: Sarah Smith, watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic, with a black line border44 x 34 cm.; 17 ¼ x 13 3/8 inchesProvenanceFrances Smith Beale (1800-1849), the artist’s niece, daughter of Frances Mary Stone (1769-1852), sister of the artist;Ellen Beale Brooker d. 1900, (m. in 1868 William Watkiss Lloyd, 1813-1893);Eireene Watkiss Lloyd; daughter of the above m. William Docker Drysdale (1866-1952) of Wick Hall, Radley, Oxfordshire;William Docker Drysdale (1906-1985); Park End, Radley;Patrick Dockar-Drysdale (1929-2020), Wick Hall, Radley;LiteratureChristine Jackson, Sarah Stone Natural Curiosities from the New Worlds, 1998, p. 131 no. 6 (Watercolour Drawings by Sarah Stone in Public and Private Institutions-Private Collection A)Sarah Stone was the first female British painter of birds and animals to achieve professional recognition. Her drawings of birds are a highly important visual record of the specimens held in collections in late eighteenth century England and included some from the voyages of Captain Cook, and were exhibited at the Leverian Museum in 1784. This spectacular drawing with its finished background is an important work intended for display.Stone was employed when she was still in her mid-teens to draw the objects in the Holophusican or Leverian Museum, housed in the former royal palace Leicester House, and a major cultural institution of the day. She was to work there for nearly thirty years. Its owner, Sir Ashton Lever (1729-1788) commissioned her by 1777 to record specimens and ethnographic material brought back by British expeditions to Australia, the Americas, Africa and the Far East.For financial reasons, Lever had to dispose of his collection in the 1780s, by lottery. Before doing so he apparently commissioned Sarah Stone to depict the birds, ethnography and antiquities. From January to March 1784 Lever exhibited Stone’s work, advertising the show as:‘a large Room of Transparent Drawings from the most curious specimens in the collection, consisting of above one thousand different articles, executed by Miss Stone, a young lady who is allowed by all Artists to have succeeded in the effort beyond imagination. These will continue to be open for the inspection of the public until they are removed into the country. Admittance HALF-A-CROWN each…Good fires in all the galleries.’ (See C. Jackson, ibid, p. 22).Lever kept Stone’s drawings after the exhibition was over. The Leverian Museum continued to grow under new ownership through the 1780s and 1790s, and Stone continued working there. This exceptional drawing of a macaw can be linked with one of the three specimens of this bird sold at the sale of the Leverian Museum in 1806 when the collection was dispersed (see Christine Jackson, ibid, p. 131).Stone also drew items from other private collections and the British Museum. As most of the actual specimens have not survived, her drawings are a vital record of contemporary collections, few of which produced catalogues, and give valuable insight into the collecting practises of contemporary museums.Stone was the daughter of James Stone, a fan painter, and it is highly likely that she assisted her father. As a child she was taught to make her own pigments using natural ingredients - the intense blues and yellows of this work are extraordinary and a testament to her skill at mixing pigments. She practised working in bodycolour as well as watercolour as a child, and the exquisite brushwork which can be seen in the drawing of the feathers of the macaw also demonstrates her skill at using bodycolour and gum arabic to intensify the colours. The tree branches which Stone habitually included in her drawings are a distinctive feature of her work. Very few of her works include a sky, and Christine Jackson ibid, p. 16, suggests that she included them in watercolours which were intended to be framed. The spectacular and carefully draw nature of the present work appears to bear this out and suggests that it was an important work intended for display which remained in her family.Stone exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in 1781, 1785 and 1786. She exhibited paintings of birds at the Society of Artists in 1791. She married John Langdale Smith, a midshipman, on 8 September 1789 and exhibited as a ‘painter’ before her marriage and in her married name as an ‘Honorary Exhibitor’ thereafter. She painted less after her marriage, mainly drawing live birds which her husband, also an artist, brought back from his travels. She signed her work with her married name of Smith and thus the present work must date from after September 1789.Stone was nearly thirty when she married, and a daughter Eliza, who probably died in infancy, was baptised in September 1792 at St John the Evangelist, Westminster. A son, Henry Stone Smith (1795-1881) was baptized in the same church in March 1795. The family has a note by him recording a bird ‘Topial’, probably a troupial, brought back from the West Indies by his father and living and domesticated with the family (see C. Jackson, ibid, p. 30).Further examples of Stone’s watercolours can be found in the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, London, the National Library of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales, the Yale Center for British Art, the Getty, the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii and the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand.Paris Spies-Gans has written about Stone’s participation in the imperial project in Paul Mellon Centre Notes, No. 20, ‘Colonialism in the Photographic Archive’, January 2022, pp. 11-12).The blue and yellow macaw (Psittacus arauna), also known as the blue-and-gold-macaw is a large South American parrot, and one of the most popular. They live in forests and woodlands. In captivity they are known for their skill at mimicry.Patrick (Paddy) Dockar-Drysdale (1929-2020)Born in Shropshire, after his education at Oxford Paddy went to Canada with his wife Olwen, as a stage-manager of a theatre company in Newfoundland. They stayed in Canada from 1955 until 1982. Paddy switched from theatre to teaching English as an assistant professor at the University of Newfoundland and then to publishing in Toronto. His specialisms were the use of language, dialects and lexicography. He made an important contribution to the codification of Canadian English.The Dockar-Drysdales returned to England to Wick Hall, Radley where they restored the grounds and gardens.Patrick Dockar-Drysdale was a descendant of Sarah Stone and had a lifelong fascination with her work about which he was knowledgeable and which he collected throughout his life. It seems likely that the macaw may have come down in the family of the artist’s niece, Frances Smith Sheppard (1800-1849), who married Lionel John Beale, a surgeon. In 1868 their daughter Ellen Brooker Beale (d. 1900), married the businessman (who worked in the family tobacco firm) and writer William Watkiss Lloyd (1813-1893). He wrote on the classics and history, his best-known work ‘The Age of Pericles’, 1875. Sophia Beale (1837-1920), the artist, writer and sister of Ellen Beale, discussed his work in a ‘Memoir’ prefixed to Lloyd’s posthumously published ‘Elijah Fenton: his Poetry and Friends’, 1894. Their daughter Eireene Watkiss Lloyd was Patrick Docker-Drysdale’s grandmother, who took the drawing to Wick Hall after her marriage to William Docker-Drysdale (1866-1952).

Watercolour over traces of pencil with gum arabic25.2 x 31.6 cm.; 9 7/8 x 12 3/8 inchesProvenanceDavid Cornwell (aka John Le Carré, 1931-2020)Augusta Innes Withers, the daughter of a Chaplain to the Prince Regent, was born in Cheltenham. She was well known to contemporaries and widely praised for her botanical and bird pictures, characterised by her meticulously detailed and accurate work, which is beautifully illustrated in the present watercolour of canaries. The bird food is in an octagonal trencher salt made of French faience or Dutch delft.Withers enjoyed a successful career and exhibited widely, at the Royal Academy in London from 1829 to 1846, the Royal Society of British Artists where she showed sixty-eight works between 1832-65 and the New Watercolour Society. She was one of the earliest members of the Society of Women Artists where she exhibited forty-three works from 1857-75.Withers enjoyed Royal patronage and was appointed flower painter to Queen Adelaide in 1833, and flower and fruit painter to Queen Victoria in 1864. She is also listed as a painter to the Horticultural Society.In 1822 she married Theodore Withers (1782-1869), an accountant from Middlesex. The couple lived mainly in London and had at least two children, Theodore (b. 1823) and Augusta (b. 1825).Withers contributed to many publications including The Botanist, John Lindley’s The Pomological Magazine and Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. She illustrated Robert Thompson’s The Gardener’s Assistant, 1859 and collaborated with Sarah Drake on James Bateman’s Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala.Three of Withers’ paintings are in the Natural History Museum, London. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge has a good holding of her watercolours, as does the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society.David Cornwell is better known by his pen name of John Le Carré, whose spy novels are internationally renowned, and many have been adapted for film and television. He worked for the Security Services in the 1950s and 1960s before turning to writing full time.