Emily Farmer Deceiving Granny

Black and red chalk on laid paperOval 15.3 x 11.5 cm.; 6 1/8 x 4 ½ inchesProvenanceBonhams, 19 February 2008, lot 144;Cyril Fry;Private collection U.K. until 2020The artist was the eldest daughter of John Carwardine of Thinghills Court, Withington, Herefordshire, and his wife Anne Bullock, a miniature painter. She also practised miniature painting, regarded as a genteel pastime for a woman. It seems that Penelope took up painting as a means of earning a living after her father ran into financial difficulties from around 1754. Cawardine exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1771 and 1772.Cawardine painted many fashionable sitters including Lady Anne Egerton, the Earl of Coventry, Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry (Wallace Collection) and Alice, the Countess of Egremont (Kenwood). James Boswell the diarist visited her home on March 15, 1763 to call on Lord Eglington who was having a miniature done, and described her in his London Journal as a ‘a very good-looking, agreeable woman’.She moved in artistic circles and was painted by George Romney, John Downman and Thomas Bardwell. She is said to have been a friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds and his sister Frances, and apparently Reynolds painted a portrait of one of her sisters as a present for her. (The only record of this is in Algernon Graves and William Vine Cronin’s A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A., 1899, where a brief entry for Miss Cawardine states ‘Sat in 1777’).Her brother Rev. Thomas Carwardine (1734-1824), was rector and clerk of Earl's Colne Priory, Essex and a close friend of Romney, who was godfather to his daughter Anne (b.1779) and a frequent visitor to their house. Romney painted his portrait in 1772.Penelope Cawardine married James Butler, organist of Ranelagh and St. Margaret's, and St. Anne's, Westminster in 1763 at St James’s, Piccadilly. After her marriage she worked much less, as the social customs of the day dictated.The National Museum of Sweden owns the only other recorded drawing by Cawardine, drawn in a very similar style to the present work. It shares the characteristic diagonal hatching of the red chalk, is on similar laid paper and is cut into a rough oval in the same way.Examples of her miniatures can be found in the Wallace Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Kenwood House, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Tormey-Holder Collection.Cyril Fry (1918 -2010) was a dealer in British drawings who owned a gallery in Jermyn Street. Fry and his wife Shirley amassed a substantial private collection over the course of his career.

Watercolour18 x 9 cm.; 7 1/8 x 3 5/8 inchesProvenanceThe Leger Galleries Ltd, ‘An Exhibition of Watercolours by Helen Allingham, R.W.S. 1848-1926’, November – December 1972, no. 153, where purchased by Sir Owen Aisher (1900-1993); The Marley Tile Co. Ltd; The Muro Collection, until 2021Sir Owen Aisher was a prominent collector of the work of Helen Allingham who owned a large number of her works. He was the chairman of the Marley Tile company, which specialised in roofing tiles, and he collected works which depicted the building materials it made. This became known as the Marley collection and was sold at Christie’s in 1991. This work was part of his personal collection.

Signed l.r. Marian/M. Chase 1874, watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of white and gum arabic, in a period sand frame20 x 29.2 cm.; 8 1/8 x 11 1⁄2 inchesChase specialised in depicting flowers, fruit and still lifes, her work characterised by delicacy and careful observation. Ellen Claxton, in her seminal work English Female Artists, London, 1876, Vol. 2, p. 184, described Chase as ‘having an intense love of the country and of wild flowers...her chief pictures have been the simple growing flowers of woods and lanes’.The artist was born in London, the daughter of John Chase, an artist, and his second wife, Georgiana. John Chase had been partly trained by John Constable and his first wife, Mary Ann Rix (d. 1840), had also been a watercolour artist. Chase was taught perspective and watercolour painting by her father and life drawing by Margaret Gillies (1803-1907), who was not only an artist but also a pioneer of women’s liberation, and amongst the earliest supporters of the suffrage movement.She exhibited from 1866 to 1905 at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute, the Dudley Gallery, the Grosvenor Gallery, the International Exhibition of 1871 and various provincial, colonial, and foreign exhibitions. On 22 March 1875, she was elected an associate of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and in 1879 she became a full member. In 1878 she contributed drawings and watercolours to the journal The Garden. In 1888 the Royal Horticultural Society awarded her a silver medal.Chase died in 1905 after a heart operation and is buried in St Pancras Cemetery.Examples of her work can be found in the Victoria & Albert Museum and in the collection of Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Signed with initials and inscribed verso: Library Fairford Park ArB, watercolour over pencil19.2 x 21.3 cmIn the collection of the Sir John Soane’s Museum are Soane’s working drawings showing alternatives for John Raymond-Barker for the library dating from 1789–90 (SM (3) 80/1/66 recto and verso (4) 81/2/98). They comprise three drawings on two sheets and a survey plan by John Sanders, a pupil from 1784 to 1789. Augusta Raymond-Barker, a keen watercolourist, married Colonel Sir Lumsley-Graham, Bt (1828–90). He fought in the Kaffir War of 1853 and the Crimean War.Provenance: Augusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park, Gloucestershire; thence by family descent until 2016

Inscribed on mount: Fairford/Miss Bosanquet, watercolour over traces of pencil19.5 x 30.5 cm; 7 3/4 x 12 1/8 inchesProvenanceAugusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park; By family descent until 2016Harriet Bosanquet, (1798-1830) daughter of William Bosanquet, a banker, married John Raymond-Barker of Fairford Park on 6 May 1823. They had two daughters, Augusta b. 1827 and Leonora, b. 1829, presumably the two girls in purple dresses in this watercolour. The drawing is by her sister Charlotte, the girls’ aunt. Charlotte Bosanquet was a talented artist of interiors and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford have an extensive collection of her work. When their father William Bosanquet died in 1840 Charlotte was left unexpectedly impoverished and moved from house to house staying with members of her extended Hugenot family, building up what amounted to a pictorial diary of her movements amongst the many branches of the family, usually depicting the libraries, halls, or drawing rooms of their houses. One of her sketchbooks is entitled ‘The Bosanqueti – a selection of Several Mansion Houses, Villas, Lodges, Parks, etc., the principal residences of a distinguished Family with descriptive notes’ (see Cherry, Deborah. Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists. London: Routledge, 1993, p. 131).Fairford Park was built for Andrew Barker in 1661-2 by Valentine Strong (d.1662 and completed by Strong's eldest son Thomas) and the design is known only from Kip's engraved bird's eye view of about 1710. The house was altered circa 1740 and the grounds circa 1750-60 to Rococo taste.[ ’This almost perfect Restoration composition was however much altered in the C18; the house c. 1740 and the grounds c. 1750-60 to Rococo taste ...' (D.Verey & A. Brooks, Gloucestershire 1: the Cotswolds, 3rd ed., 1999, pp.369-70].Soane remodelled the house for John Raymond Barker in 1789-90. His Journal No. 1, in the Sir John Soane’s Museum, has an entry for 22 May 1789: 'Sanders went to Fairford this Eveng / to take plans of the House / & Offices; retd the 26', other entries follow and finish with 'Received in full April 1791 £227:8:6’. Soane’s changes to this room seem to have been restricted to the chimney piece and the cornice, and the bookcases seen framing the composition of this watercolour. (A drawing for the chimneypiece of the drawing room is in the Sir John Soane's Museum).After use as an American military hospital during the war, the family sold Fairford House in 1945 and the house (not the estate) was eventually bought by Gloucestershire County Council and became the site for Farmor's Comprehensive School.

Pastel, inscribed on reverse of original backboard: Anna Tonelli/fece in Londra/1796, in the original frame bearing the inscription Anna Tonelli H.D.Hamilton 179626.1 x 22.6 cm.; 10 ¼ x 8 7/8 inchesProvenanceMellors & Kirk, Nottingham, 9-10 June 2011, lot 713 (as of Tonelli by Hugh Douglas Hamilton);Private collection, U.K. until 2022LiteratureN. Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, no. J.722.167Anna Tonelli, née Nistri, was probably trained in Florence, possibly by Giuseppe Piattoli (1743-1823) with whom she collaborated on a portrait of the family of Granduca Pietro Leopoldo, which was engraved in 1785. At some stage before 1785 she married the virtuoso violinist Luigi Tonelli. It seems highly likely that she came across the work of Hugh Douglas Hamilton in Rome.Tonelli met Lord Clive, ‘Clive of India’, while he was travelling in Italy, and he employed her to make pastels of members of his family. From 1794 she taught drawing to his children in London. She exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1794 and 1797, giving her address as 97 Norton Street. The artist travelled with the Clive family to India between 1798 and 1801, moving around southern India with Lady Clive and her daughters. During her time in the subcontinent, she seems to have worked in watercolour or miniature, rather than pastel, and charged twelve to thirty guineas for a miniature. She painted the Rajah of Tanjore and Tipu Sultan on this trip. She returned to Florence in 1801.Tonelli’s work has been confused with that of Hugh Douglas Hamilton, which may account for the inscription on the frame. She is known to have copied his work for Lord Clive, producing portraits in 1790s to add to a series begun by Hamilton. It seems unlikely that Hamilton has any connection with the present work, as he had returned to Ireland by this date.In 1806 the American agent in Paris, Filippo Mazzei, engaged her to bring up his daughter Elisabetta. He provided a description of the family to Thomas Jefferson (letter, 20th July 1806) with a view to their emigrating to the USA, praising the father, a violinist ‘the peer of any other’, the two children (born c.1789–90), and the mother who ‘sings and plays the piano like an expert; knows very well her own language, French, and English; draws and paints with excellent taste; is accomplished in embroidery and all needlework; and knows geography quite well.’ Jefferson’s response highlighted the expense of living in a major city, which may have deterred the family, as by 2 November 1807 they were in Pisa with Mazzei, while by 1809 they seem to have returned to Florence.I am grateful to Neil Jeffares for his biographical information about the artist.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Nina Hamnett/Oct 1924/Paris, pencil, partial watermark ENGLAND25.4 x 25.7 cm.; 10 x 10 1/8 inchesProvenanceBy family descent until 2024This may be a portrait of Mary Torr, painted in oils by Hamnett in 1924.The daughter of an army officer, Hamnett was born in Wales and had a peripatetic childhood, showing early talent for drawing and painting. In 1911 she set up a studio in Grafton Street in Fitzrovia. Throughout her early career she worked at the Omega Workshops and was well known on the London art scene. Hamnett moved to Paris in 1913 and lived in Montparnasse. She attended Marie Wassilieff's academy where she had lessons with Fernand Leger, worked as an artist’s model and met Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Gertrude Stein.She was at the heart of the Anglo-French exchange of artistic ideas at this period and came and went between Paris and London. Hamnett was back in France in 1920 enjoying the Bohemian life of the French capital with other artists and seeking out the avant-garde.One of Hamnett’s first solo exhibitions was held at the Eldar Gallery, London in 1918 and consisted mainly of portraits of figures she had met in Paris.Hamnett, dubbed the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ is now recognised as a leading proponent of British Modernism and a retrospective of her work, including many drawings, was held at Charleston in 2021.The grandmother of the previous owner and her husband used to frequent the Fitzroy Tavern and drink with the artists and intellectuals who were regulars there.

Signed and inscribed on pink ribbon: Mrs Withers 26 Grove Place. Delt., watercolour with gum arabic12 x 23.9 cm; 4 3⁄4 x 9 3⁄8 inchesProvenance: Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven (1800– 1973)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 exemplified in the present drawing. Withers 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 Society of Painters in Water Colours. She was one of the earliest members of the Society of Women Artists where she exhibited forty-three works from 1857–75.Withers was appointed flower painter to Queen Adelaide in 1833, flower and fruit painter to Queen Victoria in 1864 and is 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 a large number of publications including The Botanist, John Lindley’s Pomonological 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’ works are in the Natural History Museum, London, and a large number of her original watercolours are held in the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society.Henry Rogers Broughton succeeded his older brother Urban Huttlestone Broughton as the 2nd Lord Fairhaven in 1966. He was born in the United States and educated at Harrow, before joining the Royal Horse Guards in 1920.Both brothers were great collectors and Henry put together one of the largest twentieth century collections of paintings, drawings, gouaches and miniatures. He left a large bequest of one hundred and twenty ower paintings, over nine hundred watercolours and drawings and forty- four volumes of drawings by botanical artists such as Redouté and Ehret to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in the Broughton Bequest.

Signed l.l.: Louise Rayner, watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic46.5 x 33 cm.; 18 3/8 x 13 inchesThe artist was born in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, the daughter of Samuel and Ann Rayner who were both professional artists. The most talented of six children, who all worked as artists, Louise studied painting from the age of fifteen, first with her father, and subsequently with George Cattermole, Edward Nieman, David Roberts and Frank Stone.She specialised in watercolour and her streetscapes capture the flavour of city life in 1870s and 1880s and are architecturally detailed.In 1851, when Louise was ten, the family moved to London and, except when travelling, she spent much of her life there. She would often accompany her architect brother Richard on his business trips and paint . As a result, Louise was widely travelled, both in Britain and in northern France. She most enjoyed visiting old cathedral cities and market towns, and is acclaimed for her views of Chester, London, Hastings, Tewksbury, Warwick, Edinburgh, Wrexham, Shrewsbury as well as Salisbury.By 1865 she had moved to Chester where she spent many years working and teaching painting. She lodged at the home of Robert Shearing (who owned a chemist's shop in Watergate Street) and his wife Mary Anne at 2 Ash Grove, in what was then a secluded rural location outside the city.In 1910, she and her sister Margaret, who had lodged with her for a time in Chester, moved to Tunbridge Wells. When Margaret died, in 1920, Louise moved for the last time to Southwater Road, St Leonard's-on-Sea, Sussex, and died there on 8th October 1924, aged 92. She never married.For over half a century, Louise was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, the Old and the New Watercolour Societies, the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street Gallery, the British Institution, the Society of Female Artists, the Dudley Gallery, the Birmingham Society of Artists and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.Her work can be found in many public collections including the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, Derby Museum and Art Gallery and the Salisbury Museum.

Signed and dated l.r.: SOPHIA BEALE/1869, watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic34.5 x 60 cm; 13 ¾ x 23 ½ inchesProvenanceBrightwell’s, Leominster, 12 January 2004; where purchased byPaddy Docker-Drysdale (1929-2020);By descent until 2022This substantial landscape of Heidelberg is a fine example of a detailed Pre-Raphaelite landscape. The skillful use of bodycolour applied with a dry brush creates a pleasing richness which combined with the play of dappled sunlight on the mossy rocks in the foreground and the careful selection of colours elevates the view well above topography.Beale was born in London to Frances, née Smith, and Lionel John Beale, a surgeon. Her sister, Ellen Brooker Beale, was also an artist with whom she collaborated. Sophia and Ellen Beale went to Queen’s College School, London and took art lessons at the popular Leigh’s Academy run by the artist Matthew Leigh. They copied extensively after the Old Masters and antiquities in the National Gallery and British Museum.From 1860 to 1867 the two sisters shared a studio on Long Acre in Covent Garden. In 1869 Sophia Beale travelled in Germany and France, when the present work was drawn, and in 1872 she returned to Paris, where she took classes run for women at Charles Joshua Chaplin’s (1825-1891) studio (where Mary Cassatt also studied), financing her studies by working at M. Bertin’s studio. On her return to London, Beale used the money she had earned in Paris to open an art school in Albany Street, near Regent’s Park, teaching the latest Parisian techniques.Beale was a feminist and in 1889 among the two thousand signatories to the ‘Declaration in Favour of Women's Suffrage’ formulated by the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage. Beale also advocated for the Royal Academy and the universities to allow greater access for women.The artist exhibited extensively during her lifetime at the Society of British Artists in Sussex Street, where she showed around thirty works, while she also had four works accepted by the Royal Academy between 1863 and 1887. Between 1868 and 1882 she exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy and with the Society of Women Artists from 1860 to 1881. She published four books, A guide to the Louvre (1883), The Amateur’s Guide to Architecture (1887), The Churches of Paris from Clovis to Charles X (1893) and her autobiography, Recollections of a Spinster Aunt (1908). She also wrote articles including a review of the 1894 exhibition ‘Fair Women’ at the Grafton Gallery in London for The American Architect and Building News (1876-1908), Boston 45, no. 975 (see Meaghan Clark, Fashionability, Exhibition Culture and Gender Politics: Fair Women, 2021, p. 21).