All Artworks

English School circa 1830 The head of a brow cow Oil on paper laid down on panel 9 x 8.7 cm.; 3 ½ x 3 3/8 inches Framed size 21 x 21 cm.; 8 ¼ x 8 ¼ inches Provenance Private collection, U.K.

KT634 inscribed and dated 'Canonteign July 24. 1829 [?]' on the reverse, pencil, pen and brown ink and grey wash 26.9 x 37.9 cm.; 10 ½ x 14 7/8 inches Provenance: Agnew's, London. Anonymous sale, Phillips, London, 16 July 1996, lot 16; with Heather Newman, Painswick, Gloucestershire. Abbott was one of the best amateur watercolourists of the late Eighteenth Century. A surgeon and apothecary, he lived in Exeter until 1825. He exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy from 1793, receiving contemporary acclaim for the style of his work. The artist John Downman said that ‘he prefers his drawings before his paintings, as they are done with more spirit’ (J. Farington, Diary 26 June 1804; vol. VI, p. 2362). In 1825 Abbott inherited Fordland, a Devon estate, from his uncle James White, an Exeter barrister, Nonconformist and close friend of Francis Towne. Abbott became a patron and pupil of Towne’s, and his linear style shows the artist’s influence. After moving to Fordland he devoted himself to drawing.

Signed, inscribed and dated on original label attached to backboard: Dulverton.Somerset/JWA May 30 1800, pen and black ink and watercolour on wove paper 25 x 16.5 cm.; 9 3⁄4 x 6 1⁄2 inches Provenance H.L.Bradfer-Lawrence; Andrew Wyld, his sale at Christie’s, London, 10 July 2012, lot 57, where bought by the present owner Exhibited W/S Fine Art, London, Summer 2006, no. 13; W/S Fine Art, London, Summer 2009, no. 11 Abbott was one of the best amateur watercolorists of the late Eighteenth Century. A surgeon and apothecary, he lived in Exeter until 1825. He exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy from 1793, receiving contemporary acclaim for the style of his work. The artist John Downman said that ‘he prefers his drawings before his paintings, as they are done with more spirit’ (J. Farington, Diary 26 June 1804; vol. VI, p. 2362). In 1825 Abbott inherited Fordland, a Devon estate, from his uncle James White, an Exeter barrister, Nonconformist and close friend of Francis Towne. Abbott became a patron and pupil of Towne’s, and his linear style shows the artist’s influence. After moving to Fordland he devoted himself to drawing. Dulverton is in west Somerset, on the edge of Exmoor and just over the border from Devon. This view, little changed today, looks east from near the bridge over the river Barle. Harry Bradfer-Lawrence (1887-1965) was an antiquary and manuscript collector. From King’s Lynn, he became chairman of United Breweries in 1960.

Inscribed verso: Nutwell.Oct.24th 1796, pen and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil 11.2 x 18 cm.; 4 3/8 x 7 1/8 inches Provenance Private collection U.K. until 2024 Nutwell Court is in east Devon near Lympstone overlooking the Exe estuary. Owned by Sir Francis Henry Drake, 5th Bt. (1723-1794) the estate was planted with fig trees in 1752, cedars in 1754, and laurels and evergreen oaks in 1755. By 1756 there were grape vines, a raspberry tree, a strawberry tree, a weeping willow, plane trees, cypresses, Newfoundland firs, larch trees, and a cistus. Further planting followed with black poplars, apricot trees, orange trees, Weymouth pines, myrtle and Scotch pines.

Pen and brown and grey ink and watercolour on two sheets of laid paper, joined 25.8 x 36.7 cm.; 10 x 14 ½ inches Provenance By descent from the artist until 2015; Guy Peppiatt Ltd.; Hugo Burge (1979-2023) Abbott was one of the best amateur watercolourists of the late Eighteenth Century. A surgeon and apothecary, he lived in Exeter until 1825. He exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy from 1793, receiving contemporary acclaim for the style of his work. The artist John Downman said that ‘he prefers his drawings before his paintings, as they are done with more spirit’ (J. Farington, Diary 26 June 1804; vol. VI, p. 2362). In 1825 Abbott inherited Fordland, a Devon estate, from his uncle James White, an Exeter barrister, Nonconformist and close friend of Francis Towne. Abbott became a patron and pupil of Towne’s, and his linear style shows the artist’s influence. After moving to Fordland he devoted himself to drawing where this work is most likely to have been drawn.

Pen and grey ink and wash, inscribed verso and dated: Kerswell Oct.3.1812 23.7 x 37 cm.; 9 ¼ x 14 ½ inches Provenance Private collection, U.K. until 2025 Kerswell is a hamlet in the Teignbridge district of Devon north-east of Exeter.

Numbered l.c.: 28, watercolour over traces of pencil 20.5 x 26.5 cm.; 8 x 10 ½ inches The Italian artist, born in Cremona, settled in England in 1803, having travelled in Greece and Egypt with William Wilkins, R.A. His work has often been confused with that of Constable, particularly his coastal views which look quite similar. Examples of his work may be found at the British Museum, the V&A, Brighton Art Gallery and in several other museum collections.

Watercolour over pencil 14.8 x 22 cm.; 8 x 8 ¾ inches Provenance Iolo Williams (1890-1962) The Italian artist, born in Cremona, settled in England in 1803, having travelled in Greece and Egypt with William Wilkins, R.A. His work has often been confused with that of Constable, particularly his coastal views which look quite similar. Examples of his work may be found at the British Museum, the V&A, Brighton Art Gallery and in several other museum collections.

Watercolour 18 x 9 cm.; 7 1/8 x 3 5/8 inches Provenance The 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 2021 Sir 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.l.: H C Coleman Angell., watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of bodycolour and gum arabic 23 x 32.3 cm.; 9 x 12 ½ inches Provenance John Abbott (1937-2011) The artist was anointed as his successor by William Henry Hunt whose enthusiasm for still life subjects she shared. This work can be dated to 1874-1784 as she married and took the name of her husband in 1874. Her later style was looser than her early work. She was the fifth daughter of twelve children of Henrietta Dendy and William Thomas Coleman, a physician and was schooled at home. Along with her sister, the pottery artist Rose Rebecca Coleman, she was taught painting and drawing by her older brother William Coleman who kept an art pottery studio in South Kensington and whom she helped make designs for Minton. Her early watercolours were first exhibited in the Dudley Gallery in London in 1864 thanks to the connections of her brother William. She married Thomas William Angell, a postmaster and an amateur artist, on 15 October 1874. The following year she joined the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours but resigned after she became an A.O.W.S. Angell became Flower Painter in Ordinary to Queen Victoria from 1879 until her death, succeeding Valentine Bartholomew. Her work can be found in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Albert Museum, Exeter and other public collections.

Signed or inscribed with monogram twice l.r., oil on canvas, fragments of a label attached to reverse of frame 54.5 x 45 cm Frame size 77 x 65 x 8 cm The artistic tradition of painting a self-portrait with a mirror goes back self-consciously to Velazquez’ Las Meninas and has been used by many artists to probe their artistic identity. The artist stares out at the viewer with authority and proclaims self-confident virtuosity as he paints a reflection of himself standing in front of a large canvas (another reference to Las Meninas, although he has chosen the opposite side of the composition) within the large brown wooden mirror which frames his work. He adds another smaller arched wooden mirror to provide a reflection of the back of his head, a play on space and composition which takes our eye a moment or two to unravel. A gilt framed painting is leaning against the wall and a doorway to a sunlit garden can be seen in the distance introducing a light source in the same position as Velazquez chose in Las Meninas. A painter’s rag can be seen wedged into the space between the top of the post and the mirror itself, an indication of work in progress. An interesting account of the two most famous mirrors in the history of western art, the convex mirror in Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage and the rectangular mirror in Velazquez’ Las Meninas can be found in the exhibition catalogue of Reflections- Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites, A. Smith et al, National Gallery, 2018. Paul Audra was the son of a painter from whom he learnt his craft. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and then in 1888 at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the atelier of Gustave Moreau, he worked alongside Matisse and Rouault. He returned home to Valence and became the teacher of drawing at the local school and set up his own atelier, moving in 1908 to Nice when he ran the École des Art Décoratifs from 1910. After serving in WWI he started painting again in 1917 and met Renoir and also became reacquainted with Matisse who he helped find a studio in Nice and with whom he occasionally collaborated. He is known to have enjoyed painting self-portraits. Audra exhibited at the salon in Lyon in 1897 and at the Salons d’Automne from 1907-1920.

Gouache on vellum, in the original swept frame with labels attached, inscribed on a former label: ‘…ell Pinxt…about the year 1756’ 28 x 24 cm; 11 x 9 1/2 inches Provenance Sotheby’s, London, 22 March 1979, lot 84; Davis & Long Company, New York, British Watercolours 1 - 29 November 1980, ex. catalogue; Private collection, U.S.; Paul F. Walter, New York, until 2017 Exhibited Anthony Reed, London, 1980, ‘Heads and Bodies’, no. 15, ill.; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, ‘Sporting Art from East Anglian Collections’, 28 June-10 August 1980, no. 19, ill. Comparative Literature: cf. Walpole Soc. XLVI (l978) M.Kirby Talley Jr.: 'Thomas Bardwell of Bungay, artist and author' This rural conversation piece is of exceptional interest as it is rare to find 18th century conversation pieces on vellum on such a small scale; it also has a fine level of painted detail providing invaluable information for the social historian. Major Francis Longe (1726-1776), the owner of Spixworth Hall near Norwich, is painted at home, just returned from shooting, presenting his wife, Tabitha (née Howes) with a bag containing a live leveret, a symbol of love. His dog peers around the door which shows the park from which his master has just returned, and a spaniel lies at his mistress’s feet. The sitters’ identity as landowners of some standing is directly expressed. The label on the back of the painting states that Major Longe is 30 years of age and this dates the work to 1756. His only son Francis, born in 1748, is standing next to his mother and would have been 8 years old at the time this work was made. Francis Longe married Tabitha Howes soon after he came down from Cambridge. Francis and Tabitha had a son, Francis, in 1748. Francis (the elder) was educated at Westminster School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge and served as High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1752, an office his son Francis was also to hold. His wife was the daughter of John Howes (d. 1771) of Morningthorpe Manor, Norfolk and his wife Barbara, daughter and heiress of Rev. Thomas Sydnor; they married in 1720. Barbara Howes was painted with her four children by D. Heins, when Tabitha was 14 years old. Francis, the boy in the present drawing, inherited the estate on the death of his father in 1776. He had married Catherine Jackson (1752-1828) four years earlier. Catherine’s father had an important position in the Admiralty, and sponsored Captain James Cook’s voyage of discovery to Australia. Sydney was originally called Port Jackson after him. Francis and Catherine Longe had no issue; Francis died in 1812 and the estate passed to his cousin upon his widow’s death in 1828. Spixworth Hall was an Elizabethan house located just north of Norwich on the Buxton Road. The estate became mired in debt in the hands of Francis’s widow Catherine; there were disputes over her ability to sell or mortgage parts of the property. She was reduced to cutting down a grand avenue of oak trees that lined the drive up to the Hall to produce an income. Spixworth Park was inherited by a relative, a great-grandson of Francis Longe and grandson of his second son called John (b.1731), Rector of Spixworth until his death in 1806. The house was demolished in 1950. The attribution to Thomas Bardwell is historic and strongly based upon stylistic grounds as well as the inscription on the (now lost) label which accompanied it into the late 20th century. Bardwell was born in East Anglia in 1704 and died in Norwich on 9th September 1767 and became very popular amongst the gentry of East Anglia where he painted portraits, views of country houses and conversation pieces. The Geffrye Museum, London have an oil group portrait, possibly of the Brewster family of Beccles, dated 1736 in their collection with similarities to the present drawing, notably in the high level of detail of the interior. Another comparable oil of the Broke and Bowles family dated 1740 is in the Government Art Collection (and was included in 'Manners and Morals, Hogarth and British Painting 1700-1760', Tate 1987-8). There are however no other known vellum works by Bardwell on the scale of the present work. Later in his career, Bardwell undertook a tour through Yorkshire to Scotland and painted portraits in some of the large houses en route. In his later years he had a thriving practice in Norwich. In 1756 he published a treatise entitled 'The Practice of Painting and Perspective Made Easy', an important book of its kind and of its time. The genre which grew in popularity from the early 1730s was initially associated with painters such as William Hogarth and Gawen Hamilton. These "conversations" represent a peculiarly English contribution to the arts. They reflected the rising prosperity of the urban middle class in the early 18th century which led to a demand for a more intimate and modest style of portraiture appropriate to the social status of a new class of patrons. They often depict their subjects in their domestic surroundings, a contrast to the swagger of grand portraiture. The paintings thus produced with a high level of skill are exceptional visual evidence of their lifestyle and rising prosperity, their pride in their economic achievements and their self-confidence within their prosperous bourgeois surroundings. Alongside these urban interiors are the relaxed rural conversation pieces of the Tory squirearchy produced in the years after about 1740 by artists such as Arthur Devis, Francis Hayman, Edward Haytley and Thomas Gainsborough. Bardwell would appear to have been well aware of these latest developments of composition and style both locally and in the metropolis. The portrait possibly of the Brewster Family of 1736 (see above) shows he was a pioneer of the genre, in both East Anglia and the country as a whole. Paul Walter was born in 1935 to Fred and Anna Walter, co-founders of the New Jersey industrial instruments firm Thermo Electric. Anna Walter was a benefactor of the Morgan Library and Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Through collecting, patronage, and leadership roles at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Paul Walter became one of the city’s most respected connoisseurs. We are grateful to M. Kirby Talley Jr. for his comments on this work.

Pen and black ink over pencil Each 13 x 21 cm.; 5 x 8 ½ inches Provenance J.M. Hunter, purchased from The Fine Art Society 22 November 1968 until 2023 Exhibited The Fine Art Society Ltd., London, 'Edward Bawden, CBE, RA - Recent works', 1968 Literature Claudia Roden, 'A Book of Middle Eastern Food', published by Thomas Nelson, London, 1968, with photographs by Pinkard, and black and white illustrations at the head of each chapter by Edward Bawden. These are the original drawings used to illustrated Claudia Roden’s (b. 1936) first cookery book on Middle Eastern food which mixed Bawden’s playful drawings with modern food photography and revolutionised Western attitudes to the cuisines of the Middle East and North Africa. It was substantially expanded and published in a new edition in 1986. She is the author of ten popular and critically-acclaimed cookery books and has a particular interest in the social and historical background of cooking. Bawden lived in Great Bardfield in Essex from the 1930s to 1970 and was a central figure of the Great Bardfield Artists.

Signed and dated l.r.: SOPHIA BEALE/1869, watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic 34.5 x 60 cm; 13 ¾ x 23 ½ inches Provenance Brightwell’s, Leominster, 12 January 2004; where purchased by Paddy Docker-Drysdale (1929-2020); By descent until 2022 This 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).

Inscribed on mount: Fairford/Miss Bosanquet, watercolour over traces of pencil 19.5 x 30.5 cm; 7 3/4 x 12 1/8 inches Provenance Augusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park; By family descent until 2016 Harriet 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.

Signed l.r.: S Bowdich del and inscribed l.c.: A2. Carp. /2 natl. size, pen and grey ink watercolour heightened with gold 27.7 x 35 cm.; 10 7/8 x 13 ¾ inches Literature The Freshwater Fishes of Great Britain, ‘Drawn and Described by Mrs. T. Edward Bowdich’ London, 1828, plate II Sarah Bowdich or Sarah Lee, née Wallis (1791-1856), was the daughter of a grocer and linen-draper in Colchester, where she grew up and learnt how to fish. Her parents were prosperous, property-owning non-conformists, but her father went bankrupt in 1802 and the family moved to London, where Sarah met and married the explorer Thomas Edward Bowdich (1791-1824). He sailed in 1815 for Cape Coast Castle, in present-day Ghana, with the Royal African Company, and Sarah followed in 1816 with their new-born baby. During the voyage she caught a shark and helped put down a mutiny. While she waited for her husband to return from a trip to England, Sarah studied the local culture and natural history. Thomas led an expedition inland to the Ashanti kingdom while Sarah was the first European woman to collect plants systematically in West Africa. The family settled in Paris in 1819 to study natural science in preparation for a further expedition to Africa and were assisted by the savant, Baron Georges Cuvier. They published English translations of French works, which were illustrated by Sarah. In 1822 they sailed for Africa, spending fifteen months in Madeira to study its natural history. Soon after reaching Bathurst (now Banjul in The Gambia), Thomas Bowdich died of fever in 1824. To support her three young children Sarah Bowdich forged a career in the art of natural history and her work became very popular. In 1825 in London, she published her husband’s last work on Madeira with additions of her own. Her descriptions of new species and genera of fish, birds and plants established her as the first woman known to have discovered whole genera of plants. She remarried an assize clerk, Robert Lee in 1826. In 1826 Sarah Bowdich began her most famous work The Freshwater Fishes of Great Britain comprising forty-eight plates depicting fishes, with accompanying text. The work had fifty subscribers, headed by the Duke of Sussex, the sixth son of George III, and appeared in twelve fascicles of four plates each between 1828 and 1838. Remarkably, each illustration in each of the fifty copies is an original watercolour by the artist, not a hand-coloured print, totaling 2400 watercolour illustrations. She worked from life from just-caught specimens, beautifully illustrated by the lifelike golden sheen of the carp’s scales in the present work. Her preface comments: ‘Every Drawing has been taken from the living Fish immediately it came from the water it inhabited, so that no tint has been lost or deadened, either by changing the quality of that element, or by exposure to the atmosphere’.

Signed with initials and dated l.r.: J.B. April 7 18.., pen and grey ink and grey wash 16.2 x 21.2 cm.; 6 3/8 x 8 3/8 inches Literature Dr A. Sneddon, ‘Representing Magic in Modern Ireland, Belief, History and Culture,’, CUP, 2022, ill. fig. 1 In 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.

KT397 Watercolour 17.6 x 25.8 cm.; 6 7/8 x 10¼ inches Framed size 34.5 x 44.5 cm.; 13 5/8 x 17 ½ inches Provenance Sotheby’s, London, 18 November 1971, lot 64; Charles J. Branchini until 2020 The second son of Hercules Sharpe, the artist was educated at Harrow. After leaving Cambridge where he read Maths he decided to become an artist and studied in Rome for three years. On the death of his elder brother he inherited the Brabazon estates (and name) in Ireland. He spent his summers in England and his winters travelling in Europe and, from the 1860s, further afield. In 1891 Sargent persuaded him to have an exhibition at the Goupil Gallery and, as a result, in his old age he was at the forefront of the modern movement. Brabazon was most influenced by Turner, Cox, Müller and de Wint and his work owes much to Turner's late work. This watercolour is reminiscent of the style of Sargent.

Signed with initials in pencil l.r.: HBB, watercolour 24 x 17 cm.; 9 ½ x 6 ¾ inches Provenance Pietro Raffo, until 2022 £2200 This watercolour shows the influence of J.M.W. Turner, whose watercolour studies were copied by Brabazon.

Signed with initials l.l., watercolour over pencil with touches of bodycolour on grey paper 17 x 26 cm.; 6 ¾ x 10 ¼ inches Exhibited Leger Galleries, London, November 1973; Private collection U.K. until 2022 The second son of Hercules Sharpe, the artist was educated at Harrow. After leaving Cambridge where he read Maths he decided to become an artist and studied in Rome for three years. On the death of his elder brother he inherited the Brabazon estates (and name) in Ireland. He spent his summers in England and his winters travelling in Europe and, from the 1860s, further afield. The artist visited India three times, in 1870, 1875 and 1876. In 1891 Sargent persuaded him to have an exhibition at the Goupil Gallery and, as a result, in his old age he was at the forefront of the modern movement.

Signed with initials l.r.: HBB, watercolour and bodycolour over pencil, inscribed verso: Siracuse and stamped with collector’s mark Provenance Gilbert Davis (L. 757a.); Edward Seago, his estate sale at Christie’s, London 1 March 1977, lot 94; Where bought by B.M. Williams; Christie’s, London, 21 November 2007, lot 145, where acquired by the previous owner until 2025 Gilbert Davis (1899–1983) built up a large collection of watercolours in the middle of the twentieth century. He sold the bulk of his collection in 1959 to the Huntingdon Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. Edward Seago RBA, RWS (1910-1974) was one of the most popular British artists of 20th century, who painted in oils and watercolours.

Inscribed in brown ink l.r.: Mrs Paget, pencil on laid paper, recto, with a portrait of a gentleman verso 18 x 12.7 cm; 7 x 5 inches Provenance: By descent in the artist’s family until 2017 Henrietta (Etta) Paget, née Farr, was a painter, the daughter of statistician, William Farr. The Pagets, a family of artists and illustrators, were neighbours of the Yeats family in Bedford Park in west London in the 1890s. Etta studied at the Heatherley School of Fine Art where she met Henry Marriott Paget, RBA, (1857–1936). They married in 1879 and were leading members of the Bedford Park circle of writers and artists. The house in The Orchard had a north facing studio which Etta and Henry both used before their children were born. Bedford Park was known for its free thinkers and ‘New Women’ who participated in discussions ranging from politics to art and literature with men on an equal basis. The couple had four children over eleven years, one of whom, Dorothy, became an actress. Etta’s artistic practice dwindled in the face of family life. Etta, Henry and her sister Florence, the actress, were members of the Golden Dawn, a group involved with spiritualism and the occult. W. B. Yeats was also a member and Florence was said to have had an affair with him and George Bernard Shaw. Henry Paget was a painter of historical subjects and portraits and his portrait of W.B. Yeats is in the Ulster Museum. His paintings, especially his historical scenes, were illustrative rather than inspiring and he also painted mythological subjects. Paget worked as an illustrator for the Sphere in Constantinople during the Balkan War of 1912-13.

Signed and dated l.r.: W. Callow.1833, watercolour over traces of pencil with scratching out Provenance Private collection U.K. until 2026 This fine example of Callow’s work dates from the time he was sharing a studio in Paris with Thomas Shotter Boys at 19 Rue de Bouloi near the Louvre. He visited England during the summer and presumably travelled through Dover.

Black and red chalk on laid paper Oval 15.3 x 11.5 cm.; 6 1/8 x 4 ½ inches Provenance Bonhams, 19 February 2008, lot 144; Cyril Fry; Private collection U.K. until 2020 The 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.

Signed l.r. Marian/M. Chase 1874, watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of white and gum arabic, in a period sand frame 20 x 29.2 cm.; 8 1/8 x 11 1⁄2 inches Chase 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.

KT582 Extensively inscribed in the artist’s shorthand, pen and brown ink, stamped verso with collector’s mark 14 x 20 cm.; 5 ½ x 8 inches Provenance Sir Bruce Ingram, OBE, MC (1877-1963), L. 1405a.; Michael Appleby of St James’s, by descent until 2023 The extensive shorthand reads: [upper left] ‘Masula boat leaving with water carried to ships in the roads /’, [upper right] ‘The sky… / … not out’, ‘The wet foam of the surf The light part of the picture / ‘, [lower left]; ‘Sand’; [lower right] ‘This part not the surf Boat all wet / all the figures reflected in stronger /The colour is to(o) ex... the same as the sea’. There was no harbour at Madras at this time so the masula boats had to row a long distance out from the shore to the Indiamen anchored out in the ‘roads'. The figures are a combination of boatmen and women with waterpots on their heads, loading the boat with water for the ships. The flat-bottomed masula boats, made from planks of mango wood sewn together with coconut fibres, were used to row passengers to and from the ships as well as for supplies. During the western monsoon season at the end of the year the surf could be quite violent and if the flag on the flagstaff of Fort St. George was lowered, ships were unloaded of cargo or passengers at their own risk. Chinnery arrived in Madras in 1802 and was to stay for four and a half years. The lively draughtsmanship shown in the present drawing is typical of his style at this period. Sir Bruce Ingram was a journalist and editor of ‘The Illustrated London News’ from 1900. He was particularly interested in marine drawings and collected over three thousand, including over six hundred drawings by the Van de Velde. For further information about his collecting see Luke Herrmann and Michael Robinson, 'Burlington Magazine', May 1963, 'Sir Bruce Ingram as a collector of drawings'.

Inscribed with artist’s shorthand and dated 35 c.r., pencil 7.2 x 15.1 cm.; 2 ¾ x 5 7/8 inches Provenance The Manning Galleries Ltd., January 1972; Private collection until 2023

William Wallace Collett-Mason (1895-1957) A young Indian man in military uniform and a turban holding a bayonet Pencil, black chalk and watercolour 57 x 36 cm.; 22 ½ x 14 ¼ inches This work was most probably drawn in the Jhelum area of the Punjab, now in Pakistan, near the border with Kashmir. From May 1921, Jhelum hosted the 10th Battalion of the newly reorganised 1st Punjab Regiment. The subject may be a soldier or a member of the Balochistan police force. His turban is in the style of the "Kulla Wali Pagh" which includes a "Cone Cap", which was worn by Punjabi Muslims. Head and shoulders portrait in profile of Supharas Khan from Jhelum with a comb in his hair Pencil and black chalk, with a sketch of his torso verso 56.5 x 35.5 cm.; 22 ¼ x 14 inches The sitter Supharas Khan came from the Jhelum area of the Punjab, now in Pakistan, near the border with Kashmir. Head and shoulders portrait of Supharas Khan, wearing a shirt and with a comb in his hair Inscribed l.l.: Subharas Khan. 26/Punjab. From jelhum, pencil, with a sketch l.l. 56.5 x 35.5 cm.; 22 ¼ x 14 inches The sitter is drawn from the front. The Jhelum area of the Punjab is now in Pakistan, near the border with Kashmir. From May 1921, Jhelum hosted the 10th Battalion of the newly reorganised 1st Punjab Regiment. Head and shoulders portrait of Supharas Khan, wearing a shirt with a comb in his hair Inscribed l.l: S, pencil 56.5 x 35.5 cm.; 22 ¼ x 14 inches Portrait of a young Indian man wearing a turban Signed l.r.: COLLET-MASON -, pencil 56.5 x 35.5 cm.; 22 ¼ x 14 inches Provenance By descent in the family of the artist until 2025

Signed l.c.: R. Cooper, pen and brown ink and wash over pencil on laid paper partially watermarked with the Strasburg Lily 20 x 29.4 cm.; 7 7/8 x 11 5/8 inches Framed size 31 x 41 cm.; 12 1/4 x 16 1/8 inches Provenance Iolo Williams collection The artist was born in Edinburgh and trained with his father, the engraver Richard Cooper Snr (1701-1764). He moved to London in 1761, but by 1767 was on the Continent and in Italy by 1771, where he stayed until late 1775. Cooper spent most of his time in Rome and Naples and befriended Jacob More, with whom he travelled, and was later appointed as one of More’s executors. On his return to England Cooper taught drawing at Eton College and later he also taught Princess Charlotte. He produced a series of landscape prints based on his Italian work.

Watercolour over traces of pencil heightened with gum arabic and stopping out 12.7 x 21.2 cm.; 5 x 8 2/8 inches Provenance Martyn Gregory Fine Art This colourful watercolour dates from 1833-4 and is based on a sketch made on the spot by Commander Robert Elliot, R.N. (1790-1849) in the early 1820s. Several professional watercolour artists copied his sketches, amongst them Thomas Shotter Boys, David Cox, William Purser, Samuel Prout and Clarkson Stanfield, and their watercolours were engraved and published in 1834-5 as Views in India, China, and on the Shores of the Red Sea. The present watercolour was not engraved, but other views made for this series by Cotman are in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston. The Elephanta Caves, on Elephanta Island off Mumbai are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, famous for their rock-architecture and carvings. This watercolour is taken from inside the most famous cave.

KT579 Signed l.l.: M E Cotman 1831, watercolour with scratching out and stopping out 29.5 x 36.6 cm.; 11 ¾ x 14 3/8 inches Provenance By family descent to Grahame Cotman (1878-1938); Susan Gay Wiltshire, née Cotman (d.2022) Exhibited Norwich Castle Museum, ‘Exhibition of Norwich School Pictures’, 1927, no. 151 This work was lent to the Norwich Castle Museum exhibition in 1927 by Grahame Cotman and probably depicts shipping off the Norfolk coast. Miles Edmund was John Sell Cotman’s eldest son and his closest collaborator, his work often very similar to that of his father. He is particularly famed for his seascapes in watercolour of which the present work is a fine, exhibited, example. He was born in Norwich and spent his childhood and adolescence in Great Yarmouth, learning from his father. He exhibited with the Norwich Society of Artists from 1823, when the family returned to Norwich, and assisted his father with a drawing school run from the family home. He married Elizabeth Juby in 1842 and they had three children. The family lived in North London in the early 1850s but returned to Norfolk a few years later, where Cotman continued to paint and teach. M.E. Cotman’s work can be found in many public collections including the British Museum and Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery.

KT609 Signed and dated l.l.: M.E. Cotman/June .18th, pencil, in a 19th century burr maple frame 33 x 24.5 cm.; 13 x 9 5/8 inches Provenance Dr Henry Lowe and Judy Lowe (née) Cotman until 2023

Watercolour over pencil with scratching out18.2 x 22.8 cm.; 7 ¼ x 9 1/8 inches Provenance Quentin and Molly Bridge until 2020 Exhibited Martyn Gregory, British Watercolours & Drawings, 2020, no. 8 This charming early drawing by Cox dates to circa 1815. A woman and a child can be seen collecting water in a bucket from a stream near a wooden bridge by a cottage. The child appears to be wearing a black Welsh hat.

Signed and dated l.l.: David Cox. 1836, watercolour over pencil with scratching out 18 x 26 cm In the summer of 1836 Cox spent a few weeks at Rowsley, painting at Haddon Hall. He made several watercolours of elegant figures in seventeenth century costume strolling on the terrace there to which the present work relates. Although the present work does not appear to be of Haddon, it fits in with this period of his oeuvre.

Inscribed l.r.: Bruges, watercolour 7.6 x 11.4 cm; 3 x 4½ inches Provenance Spink & Son Ltd, London, K3/1890b, part of a group purchased from Appleby Brothers, 2 August 1960. This spontaneous, on-the-spot sketch was presumably done when Cox visited Bruges in 1826. His first trip to the Continent was organised by his brother-in-law Mr Gardener, an agent for the sale of government ordnance maps who had premises at 163 Regent Street, London. Gardener persuaded Cox and his son David Cox Jr to accompany him on a business trip to Brussels. The party travelled from Dover to Calais and then, travelling by diligence, on to Dunkerque, Bruges and Brussels. Cox evidently liked the caps worn by the market women in Belgium as he sketched them again in Brussels.1 1. See N. Neil Solly, Memoir of the Life of David Cox, 1873, reprinted 1973, p. 49.

KT587 Signed and dated l.l.: D. Cox/1824, watercolour over pencil 22.6 x 28.9 cm.; 8 ¾ x 11 3/8 inches Provenance Colnaghi (exhibited as ‘In the Wye Valley’); Viscount Eccles (1905-1994); Abbott and Holder; from where acquired by Peter Roberts until 2023 Exhibited Probably the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1824, no. 289, Hay Field – View near Hereford This charming watercolour is a fine example of the fluent small-scale drawings with which Cox had commercial success in the mid to late 1820s. He wrote to William Radclyffe that he intended to devote more time to saleable smaller works, as his larger pictures were not finding buyers (Scott Wilcox points out that his discovery of the elegant small watercolours by Bonington at this date would have provided a compelling model (See Scott Wilcox, ed., Sun, Wind, and Rain: The Art of David Cox, exhibition catalogue, Yale Centre for British Art, p. 36). The castellated church in in middle distance may well be modelled on St Peter’s, Lugwardine. The building to the right of the church bears a passing resemblance to Sufton Court (which is not so close to the church). Cox was an artist, not a topographer, and frequently modified landscapes and landmarks to suit his artistic vision. Viscount (David) Eccles (1905-1994) had a fine collection of 18th and 19th century British drawings. He was a politician who organised the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. After being sacked by Harold Macmillan in July 1962 he went back into business, first as a director of Courtaulds and later as chairman of West Cumberland Silk Mills. Peter Roberts was a school master and collector of English watercolours who taught English at Oundle School until his retirement in 2007.

Signed with initials l.l.: TC, oil on paper laid down on canvas 26.5 x 36 cm.; 10 3/8 x 14 1/8 inches The artist studied in Birmingham under Joseph V. Barber (1788-1838) and moved to London in 1828. He was one of the leading practitioners of the Birmingham School of Artists and a founder member of the Etching Club. Creswick exhibited over 250 paintings in London during his lifetime at the Royal Academy and Suffolk Street Galleries, and also worked as an illustrator. He sought out subjects from the rivers and streams all over the British Isles. The present work has a pleasing spontaneity and sense of place which reflects Creswick’s habit of painting outside from nature. He was particularly drawn to streams which he painted many times. He revels in depicting the colours, shapes and textures of the boulders in the foreground of this work and excels himself conveying the softness of the moss on the first rock. John Ruskin praised Creswick’s handling of foliage and his observations from nature in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843). Oils on paper by him are comparatively rare. Creswick’s work is represented in many British institutional collections and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

Pencil on laid paper 15 x 17.5 cm.; 6 x 7 ¼ inches Provenance Sabin Galleries Ltd., “The Sublime and Beautiful’, 1973, no. 88 The artist was an architect and surveyor as well as an artist, the fifth and youngest son of the architect George Dance the Elder, from a family of architects, artists and dramatists. His brother Nathaniel Dance (Dance-Holland) was also a painter and later a politician. Both brothers were founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. There has been confusion over the authorship of some of the caricatures with which both brothers are associated.

KT523 Pen and grey ink and watercolour over pencil on laid paper watermarked J WHATMAN, inscribed verso in pencil: Inscribed on old mount/near Chepstow/William Day 30x 39 cm.; 11 ¾ x 15 3/8 inches Provenance Cyril Fry This exceptionally fresh drawing is a lovely example of the work of William Day, an accomplished amateur artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1782 and 1801 as an Honorary Exhibitor. The late Judy Egerton wrote an article about him in The Connoisseur, July 1970, pp. 176-185. It is not known for certain when Day met John Webber, the Swiss-born artist who is famous for accompanying Captain Cook on his last expedition to the South Seas between 1776 and 1780. The Connoisseur article notes, without giving a source, that the friendship between the two artists “began about 1787”. Day and Webber were sketching together in the Wye valley in 1788, which is the first time that pairs of views by the two artists of the same subject are known to exist. Two watercolours by Webber of Chepstow Castle dated 1788, which are now in the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester (D.1900.12 & D.1970.77) (see Charles Nugent, British Watercolours in the Whitworth Art Gallery, 2003, p. 282) correspond to two watercolours by Day which were acquired by Chepstow Museum in 2012. A family note lists Day’s interest in the following order:’ Geology, Minerology and Painting’ and he formed one of the earliest private collections of minerals in England. His collection was carried on by his son William Day (1797-1849) and his grandson and passed to the Hampstead Central Library where it was destroyed by bombing during WWII.

KT514 Signed and dated on mount l.l.: E. Dayes 1791, pen and grey ink and watercolour with touches of bodycolour over traces of pencil on wove paper, on original laid paper mount 21 x 13.9 cm.; 8 ¼ x 5 ½ inches Provenance Sotheby’s, 25 January 1989, lot 54, where bought by James Hall, his collection no. 23, until 2022 The Abbey was founded for the Cistercians between 1175 and 1178 by Hervey de Montemarisco, Marshall of Henry II, who became its first abbot. At the Reformation Henry VIII granted the Abbey to Sir Osborne Itchingham. The church is one of the longest Cistercian churches in Ireland.

KT748 Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919) A head study of the model Alessandro di Marco Coloured chalks on coloured paper 35.5 x 32.5 cm: 14 x 12 ½ inches Provenance Private collection, U.K. Alessandro di Marco was a professional artist’s model from Piedmont. Evelyn De Morgan made studies of him on several occasions, initially when she was at the Slade and later in her own studio. This drawing probably dates from 1890s. Another study of Alessandro in the De Morgan Foundation collection, for her 1899 painting The Valley of Shadows is not dissimilar to the present work (D_EDM_0038): https://www.demorgan.org.uk/collection/study-of-a-head-male/ Di Marco was used by Evelyn De Morgan in two works depicting Boreas, 'Boreas and Oreithyia' (De Morgan Foundation P_EDM_0040, 1896) and 'Boreas and the Fallen Leaves' (c. 1910-14). He also features in 'Aurora Triumphans' (1876), 'Life and Thought Have Gone Away’ (1893), 'The Poor Man Who Saved the City' (1901), 'The Marriage of St. Francis and Holy Poverty' (1905), 'The Gilded Cage, A Soul in Hell’ (with curly hair) and '1914'. Di Marco modelled for Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-1896) in Rome and was one of the artists’ models working in London around 1870. Sir William Blake Richmond (1842-1921) described him as “a fellow so graceful and of such a colour, a kind of bronze gold” (S.T. Buckle, British Art Journal, Autumn 2012, Vol. 13, Issue 2, p.67: https://www.eb-j.org/pdfViewer/articles/MTA1OA== 2012). William Hamo Thornycroft noted in his diary that Alessandro sat for long periods of time without a break. He was the model for Merlin in Edward Burne-Jones’s earlier work 'The Beguiling of Merlin' (1872-77). He was also photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron. George Richmond described him as ‘the living embodiment of a classical sculpture’.

Watercolour on laid paper, with exhibition label attached to backboard 15 x 32.5 cm.; 6 x 12 3⁄4 inches Provenance Miss Bostock, companion to Miss H.H. Tatlock, the artist’s granddaughter; Christie’s, 12 September 1941, lot 29; Where purchased by Thomas Agnew & Son Ltd., London; Sold to a private collector 18 May 1942; Private collection, Wiltshire until 2023 Exhibited Usher Art Gallery Lincoln, Peter De Wint Exhibition, 1937, no. 146 Horsemen can be seen in the foreground of this freely drawn, spare landscape, which exemplifies Peter de Wint’s brilliance and delicacy in the laying of washes.

Watercolour over traces of pencil on Creswick paper 31 x 48.3 cm.; 12 ¼ x 19 inches Provenance Christie’s, London, the Artist’s sale, 27 May 1850, lot 378; Christie's London, April 25, 1995, 116; Bill Thomson, Albany Gallery until 2021 De Wint first visited Shropshire in 1829-1830 and exhibited a number of Shropshire views throughout his career. He had two major patrons there, Lord Clive at Oakley Park near Ludlow, not far from the Clee Hills, and Edward Cheney of Badger Hall.

Inscribed l.r. (under mount): inscribed lower right: to place a / piece of very / white Paper / under it, but not / to paste it to any / thing – or kept in a book, black chalk, stump and watercolour 21.5 x 17.6 cm.; 8 ½ x 6 7/8 inches Provenance: With Sabin Galleries, London; Christie's, London, 11 November 1997, lot 22; Timothy Clowes until 2020

Oil on paper 26 x 31 cm.; 10 ¼ x 12 ¼ inches Provenance The Artist’s Estate This is an early work by the artist. Evelyn Dunbar was a devout and committed Christian Scientist throughout her life. Much of her work reflects her beliefs, mostly indirectly but sometimes directly. Christopher Campbell-Howes, the artist’s nephew, has suggested that this work may be an interpretation of the hymn ‘Shall We Gather by the River,’ with words adapted from the original Baptist version of Revelation 22. It begs comparison with Stanley Spencer, whose art was a significant influence on her work. The absence of men in the composition is deliberate, while the inclusion of young children and babies with the young women who make up the circle gathered around an ambiguous stone, in the centre, perhaps adds an air of mystery and female potency to the work. Evelyn Mary Dunbar was the fifth child of William Dunbar, a tailor and purveyor of household linens, and Florence (née Murgatroyd), an amateur artist known for floral still lifes. Dunbar's childhood and adolescence were spent in Rochester, where she developed strong skills in draughtsmanship and composition, as well as a sophisticated sense of colour. Dunbar was encouraged by her mother and her aunt, and she was awarded an exhibition to the Royal College of Art in 1929, where she was greatly influenced by William Rothenstein, Allan Gwynne-Jones, Alan Sorrell, Percy Horton and Charles Mahoney. In her fourth and postgraduate year she was invited by Mahoney, her mural tutor, to join a team to decorate the hall at Brockley Grammar School for Boys (now Prendergast Hilly Fields School) with an extensive series of murals, mostly based on Aesop's fables. Started in 1933, they were inaugurated to acclaim in 1936. In December 1939 Sir William Rothenstein suggested she should apply for employment as a war artist. She was given the remit of recording the Home Front of women's war time activities. Dunbar was the only female artist to be given a series of rolling employment contracts throughout the war, and by 1945 had completed 44 works. In 1942 Dunbar married Roger Folley, a horticultural economist then serving in the RAF. While Folley worked at Oxford University, Dunbar taught at the Ruskin School of Art. She painted biblical and literary allegorical paintings at this period. In 1950 Folley was appointed to a senior post at Wye College, in Kent where the couple moved. Landscape and portraiture began to occupy her, and her only solo exhibition, held in Wye in 1953, reflected her wider subject matter (See Christopher Campbell-Howes, Evelyn Dunbar: A Life in Painting, 2016). A retrospective of Dunbar’s work entitled Lost Works was held at Pallant House, Chichester, in 2015.

Watercolour over traces of pencil, inscribed verso: Llangollen-lan-Llangollen and inscribed on mount: Emily Dundas, a tiny sketch of a girl’s head verso 9.3 x 9.4 cm; 3 5/8 x 3 5/8 inches, in a carved wood frame Both the Ladies of Llangollen came from Ireland and it was here that the two women formed a strong emotional bond and attachment that would endure for the rest of their lives and attract the attention of Regency society. Eleanor Charlotte Butler (1739 –1829) (seated in this drawing and wearing the order of Saint Louis, an order of chivalry founded by the French king) was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Ormonde of Kilkenny Castle. Sarah Ponsonby (1755 – 1831) lived with relatives, Sir William and Lady Elizabeth Fownes, in Woodstock, County Kilkenny and was a second cousin of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough, father of Lady Caroline Lamb. Ponsonby attended boarding school at Kilkenny, and it was there, aged 13, that she met Butler, who was 16 years her senior. They became fast friends and corresponded regularly. Rather than face the possibility of being forced into unwanted marriages, or into a convent in the case of Butler, the pair left County Kilkenny together in April 1778 dressed as men, with a pistol and Sarah’s beloved dog Frisk. Their families tracked them down and tried to make them give up their plans. They finally succeeded in fleeing together to Wales and established themselves at a cottage near Llangollen, which they renamed Plas Newydd, in 1780, which they refurbished in a Gothick style. Windows were gothicised and old stained glass panels inserted into them. A library was filled with finely bound books and curiosities of all kinds, including a lock of Mary Queen of Scots' hair. They developed a passion for old, carved wood, from medieval churches to fragments of Elizabethan furniture. The staircase hall was lined with it, and a trio of canopies built on to the door and windows. The extraordinary front porch incorporates carvings of the four evangelists, Latin inscriptions, seventeenth century bedposts and lions donated by the Duke of Wellington (visitors soon learnt that to appear with gifts of carvings ensured a warm welcome). Over the years they added a circular stone dairy and created a garden in the picturesque style. Eleanor kept a diary of their activities. Living on a modest income they maintained a quiet life, studying literature and languages which they described as their ‘system’ and improving their estate. They did not actively socialise and were uninterested in fashion, wearing dark riding habits for formal and informal occasions and beaver hats, as seen in Dundas’ drawing. Their hair remained cropped in the ‘Titus’ style, fashionable in the 1790s and they continued to use hair power, which went out of fashion after the same decade. Many observers commented on their masculine appearance. Their life began to attract the interest of the outside world and Plas Newydd became a haven for visitors, as they become a celebrated example of 'retirement', leaving society for a rustic idyll, which delighted writers such as Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott. They were also admired for their 'Romantic Friendship’.Visitors including Southey, Wordsworth, Shelley, Lord Byron, Lady Caroline Lamb, Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington and Josiah Wedgwood visited. The two formed a literary circle that encompassed Mary Tighe, Ann Talbot, Anna Seward, Hester Thrale (otherwise known as Hester Piozzi, Dr. Johnson’s friend, was a neighbour), Henrietta Bowdler, Madame de Genlis and William Wordsworth. Copious correspondence resulted, some of which, for example letters to Anna Seward, have been published (Collected Letters of Anna Seward, 1811). On some days as many as twenty visitors arrived. Their notoriety spread abroad and continental visitors includedPrince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, the German nobleman and landscape designer, who wrote admiringly about them. Queen Charlotte wanted to see their cottage and persuaded George III to grant them a pension. There was speculation that there was more than romantic friendship between Eleanor and Sarah in their own lifetime. The diaries of Anne Lister (1791–1840), an English landowner from Halifax, West Yorkshire, record a visit to the Ladies of Llangollen in 1822. Her diaries contain accounts of her own lesbian relationships written in code. She was fascinated by the two women and discreetly tried to establish if they were more than just friends, concluding that it seemed unlikely that their friendship was just platonic. Their queer materiality has been explored by Fiona Brideoak in ’Desire, Indeterminism and the Legacies of Criticism’, 2017.Butler and Ponsonby lived together for over fifty years until the end of their lives. Their books and glassware carried both sets of initials and their letters were jointly signed. Eleanor Butler died in 1829, and Sarah Ponsonby two years later. They are both buried at St Collen's Church in Llangollen. Plas Newydd is now a museum run by Denbighshire County Council and is open to the public. Although the Ladies of Llangollen's fame was extraordinary, romantic female friendships were common in eighteenth century Europe. Women often spent a great deal of time in each other's company and developed strong, intense relationships. Female friends frequently wrote to one another using passionate, romantic language that can suggest a sexual relationship to modern readers. Some of the relationships reflected in correspondence were no doubt sexual, others may simply have reflected the conventions of friendship. It is impossible to find conclusive proof whether the relationship between Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby was sexual or not, but there is abundant evidence that it was loving. Not that many images of the pair are known as the ladies disliked having their portrait taken. Lady Mary Leighton (née Parker) sketched them individually in pencil and a lithograph was made by Richard James Lane, after Lady Leighton circa 1830-1840s showing them seated at Plas Newydd. A second pirated version was made by James Henry Lynch, printed by Day & Haghe, circa 1833-1845 and shows the pair full-length wearing riding habits and top hats in their garden. Lady Delamere sketched them in old age showing them walking inside Plas Newydd (see E. Mavor, 'The Ladies of Llangollen- a study in Romantic Friendship',1971, ill. facing frontispiece and facing p. 97). Provenance: Augusta Raymond-Barker (step-niece of the artist), Fairford Park, Gloucestershire; thence by family descent until 2016 See also:Fiona Brideoak, 'The Ladies of Llangollen – Desire, Indeterminism and the Legacies of Criticism', 2017. The artist of this drawing, which lies somewhere between portraiture and caricature, was Lady Emily Dundas, née Reynolds-Moreton, the fourth daughter of Thomas, 1st Earl of Ducie. In 1847 she married Admiral Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas, GCB, (1785-1862) as his second wife. He became the First Naval Lord in the first Russell ministry in July 1847 and they lived at Admiralty House. Thackeray records that during the 1850 season Lady Emily Dundas gave a glittering party. Lady Emily Dundas is recorded as accompanying her husband on many official engagements such as inspecting the fleet in various places from Cork to Malta and as far afield as New Zealand. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean in 1852 and led all naval operations in the Black Sea, including the bombardment of Sevastopol in October 1854 during the Crimean War. She went with him to Turkey and took a house at Therapia. Lady Emily Dundas had four sisters. Her youngest sister, Lady Catherine Reynolds-Moreton (d. 2 Dec. 1892), married in 1841, John Raymond-Barker, of Fairford Park, Gloucestershire (d. 21 May 1888). He had two daughters by his first wife, Harriet Bosanquet (1798-1830) Augusta (1827-1900) and Leonora. Augusta assembled the friendship album from which this watercolour comes which reveals the women of her family and circle as accomplished watercolourists. The artist of this drawing, which lies somewhere between portraiture and caricature, was Lady Emily Dundas, née Reynolds-Moreton, the fourth daughter of Thomas, 1st Earl of Ducie. In 1847 she married Admiral Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas, GCB, (1785-1862) as his second wife. He became the First Naval Lord in the first Russell ministry in July 1847 and they lived at Admiralty House. Thackeray records that during the 1850 season Lady Emily Dundas gave a glittering party. Lady Emily Dundas is recorded as accompanying her husband on many official engagements such as inspecting the fleet in various places from Cork to Malta and as far afield as New Zealand. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean in 1852 and led all naval operations in the Black Sea, including the bombardment of Sevastopol in October 1854 during the Crimean War. She went with him to Turkey and took a house at Therapia. Lady Emily Dundas had four sisters. Her youngest sister, Lady Catherine Reynolds-Moreton (d. 2 Dec. 1892), married in 1841, John Raymond-Barker, of Fairford Park, Gloucestershire (d. 21 May 1888). He had two daughters by his first wife, Harriet Bosanquet (1798-1830) Augusta (1827-1900) and Leonora. Augusta assembled the friendship album from which this watercolour comes which reveals the women of her family and circle as accomplished watercolourists.

Pencil and grey wash 20.2 x 14.6 cm.; 8 1/8 x 5 ¾ inches Frame size 41 x 34 cm.; 16 x 13 2/8 inches Provenance: By descent in the Seymour family and that of Earl Spencer, until sold at Christie's, London, 'The Althorp Attic Sale', 7 July 2010, lot 1;with Martyn Gregory, London;with Ellison Fine Art, London; Timothy Clowes until 2020 The brothers, drawn here in the mid 1790s, were the children of Vice-Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour and Lady Anne Horatia Waldegrave. Sir Horace entered the army and served as an MP. Frederick was to marry twice, firstly Lady Mary Gordon, daughter of the 9th Marquess of Huntly and then, in 1832, Lady Augusta Hervey, daughter of Frederick, 1st Marquess of Bristol. This picture descended in the Spencer family until the Christie's sale of 2010. The Seymours were related to the Spencers by marriage. Sir Horace married, as his second wife, Frances Poyntz, whose sister was Georgiana, wife of Frederick, 4th Earl Spencer. She died in 1851 and three years later the Earl married Sir Horace's daughter, Adelaide.

Oil on paper laid down on canvas 15.1 x 21.6 cm.; 6 x 8 ½ inches Frame size 25.5 x 32 cm.; 10 x 12 ½ inches Engraved By the artist as a lithograph on chine collé, printed by Charles Motte, 1828, plate 8 Newton Fielding produced a series of lithographs of mammals which were printed by Charles Motte in 1828. The artist was the youngest son of portrait painter Nathan Theodore Fielding. From 1827 to 1830 he lived in Paris, where he ran the family engraving business, at which William Callow worked. He was closely associated with the Anglo-French circle of artists centred around Bonington and Delacroix. He collaborated with his brothers Thales and Theodore in England before returning to France where he built up an extensive teaching practice, with pupils including members of the family of King Louis- Philippe. He published a number of teaching manuals and lived in France until his death.

Watercolour 17.5 by 25.5 cm Two of the dogs are terrier types (Irish terrier on the left, and black and tan on the right) and the white dog with brown spots is a pointer type. Provenance: Augusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park, Gloucestershire; thence by family descent until 2016 The artist was the youngest son of portrait painter Nathan Theodore Fielding. From 1827 to 1830 he lived in Paris, where he ran the family engraving business, at which William Callow worked. He was closely associated with the Anglo-French circle of artists centred around Bonington and Delacroix. He collaborated with his brothers Thales and Theodore in England before returning to France where he built up an extensive teaching practice, with pupils including members of the family of King Louis- Philippe. He published a number of teaching manuals and lived in France until his death.

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour on thick cream paper 12.8 x 17.7 cm; 5 ⅛ x 7 inches Provenance: Frances Foster, the artist’s second wife. This delightful sketch is unusually spontaneous for the artist and shows the influence of John Ruskin. Huge skies are a frequent component of Birket Foster’s more finished watercolours.

KT524 Signed and dated l.c.: L Francia 1828 (?), watercolour with scratching out 19.7 x 27.5 cm.;7 ¾ x 10 ¾ inches Provenance Sotheby’s, London, 7 June 2006, lot 356; Bonhams, London, 23 September 2008, lot 40 This charming view of London from Greenwich is painted from a similar vantage point to the artist’s famous self-portrait in Greenwich Park, in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais (Inv.86-57-2). The towers of the hospital can be seen in the present drawing, with the dome of St Paul’s cathedral looming between them on the horizon. Francia was Bonington’s teacher whose work provides an important link between British and French watercolour painting in the early nineteenth century. A native of Calais, he left for London in 1788 after the outbreak of the French Revolution and remained until 1817. He established a practice as a drawing master in London and a reputation as a painter of marine and landscape watercolours. He attended the Monro ‘Academy’, made sketching tours, was secretary of the Brothers, a sketching club of which Girtin was a member and was also secretary of the Associated Artists in Water Colours. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1795-1822. Francia returned to Calais in 1817. He gave Bonington his first professional lessons in watercolour in Calais as well as other artists including William Wyld, Eugène Isabey, Tesson and Collignon. British and French artists who passed through the town on a tour of the coast or en route to Paris or London would visit him.

KT453B Inscribed and dated in pencil verso: Tring Hill/ 1791, oil on paper 12.8 x 19 cm.; 5 1/16 x 7 ½ inches Frame size 29 x 34 cm.; 11 1/4 x 13 ¼ inches Provenance Mr Nicholson, Oxford, until 1942, when acquired by Edward Croft-Murray, CBE, (1907-1980); Jill Croft-Murray until 2020; Woolley and Wallis, The Edward Croft-Murray Collection, 11 August 2021, lot 421 This spontaneous oil sketch originally came from an album of oil sketches from nature, executed in 1790s and assembled by the artist for his own pleasure, inscribed ‘Studies from nature by G. Garrard’. Five further examples of his oil sketches of locations in and around London are in the collection of Tate Gallery.

Inscribed verso: Primrose Hill coloured on the spot by/Girtin, watercolour over pencil on oatmeal paper. 19.7 x 48.7 cm.; 7 ¾ x 19 inches Provenance Arthur Boney, his sale, Sotheby’s, 7 October 1947, lot 34, bought by P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. , London; Ray Livingston Murphy (1923-1953), New York, by 1950, his sale, Christie’s, 19 November 1985, lot 35; Robert Tear, OBE (1939-2011), his sale, Sotheby’s, 9 July 2014, lot 189; With Guy Peppiatt Fine Art; Private collection, U.K. until 2024 Literature T. Girtin and D. Loshak, The Art of Thomas Girtin, 1954, no. 416, p. 191; G. Smith, Thomas Girtin (1775-1802): An Online Catalogue Archive and Introduction to the Artist, TG1761 Exhibited New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Prospects, 1950, no. 18., pl. 9b; Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, London, British Drawings and Watercolours, 2015, no. 17 This panoramic landscape has been identified as showing Primrose Hill in north London, on the basis of an inscription on the back of the drawing, and Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak consequently dated it to 1800–1801. The area was then undeveloped. It did not become a place of leisure and recreation until well into the nineteenth century, since when the rapid expansion of the city northwards changed the appearance of the landscape so greatly that it may never be possible to confirm the identification of the view with certainty. The work may well have been coloured on the spot, as the inscription suggests, as it is worked in a limited palette without much foreground detail.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Cave on the Island/of Elephanta/Dec 9th. 69 and further signed by another, watercolour over pencil. The artist visited the famous Hindu temple carved into the rockface on the island of Elephanta. Constructed between the fifth and sixth century, the temple is part of the ‘City of Caves’ devoted to the cult of Shiva. For further work by this artist please see the catalogue link and enquire about availability.

Charles Gore (1729-1807) A view of the East front of Arundel Castle, West Sussex, seen from the Bowling Green Inscribed l. r.: Arundel Castle taken from the Platform or/Bowling Green by Charles Gore Esq 1781 and indistinctly inscribed in pencil u. r.: Arundel Castle Sufsex/1781 Watercolour over touches of pencil on laid paper, with a Whatman watermark 19.6 by 49 cm., 7 ¾ by 19 ¼ inches Provenance Iolo Williams (1890-1962); And by descent until sold Sotheby's, London, 13 July 1989, lot 5; Private collection; With Guy Peppiatt Fine Art The bowling green is the name for the square earthworks located, with the fishponds, on the east side of the castle. They were probably made originally to improve the castle’s defences during the Civil War. Used as a bowling green in eighteenth century, as shown in the drawing by Charles Gore, today a rose garden can be found here. The Hon. Charles Gore was the son of a Lincolnshire landowner and educated at Westminster. He married a wealthy heiress of a shipbuilding company and learnt to draw and design ships. Gore travelled extensively in Europe, sketching with the German artist Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807). Gore copied marine oils, completed the unfinished drawings of other artists, and also developed his own style having acquired an expert knowledge of the sea. His interest in classical antiquities led Charles Gore to join Hackert and Richard Payne Knight on their expedition to Sicily from April to June 1777. In 1779 Gore returned to England and became a member of the Dilettanti Society in 1781. He painted a series of panoramic views of Sussex including the current drawing. The family returned to the Continent in 1782 and he settled in Weimar in 1791 with his daughter Eliza. Examples of Gore's work can be found in the British Museum, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Weimar.

Pen and grey ink and watercolour with a pen and ink line border on laid paper, signed and dated 1776 and inscribed “copied from a drawing by Captain Grose”, verso 23 x 25 cm; 9 x 9 5/8 inches Provenance By descent in the family to Geoffrey Gosselin, the great, great, great-grandson of the artist, his sale at Philipps, London, 5 November 1999, lot 31 (part lot) Joshua Gosselin joined the Guernsey Militia in 1758 and over a military career of forty years rose to the rank of Colonel in 1789. He was elected a Greffier of the Royal Court in 1768. Gosselin had a deep love of nature and made a comprehensive list of the wildflowers of Guernsey, the earliest record of its kind. He also collected and studied seashells, was a noted antiquarian and an important figure in Guernsey society.

KT693 Elizabeth Gould (1804-1841) Maryland or northern bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) Signed l.r.: Eliza Gould/1829, watercolour, inscribed in pencil l.r.: Maryland Quail and further indistinctly inscribed, on wove paper watermarked 1816 64 x 50.5 cm.; 25 ¼ x 19 ¾ inches Provenance Thomas Barwick Lloyd Baker (1807-1886) of Hardwicke Court, Gloucestershire, promotor of reformatory schools and influential writer on crime and punishment; thence by family descent until 2025 Elizabeth Gould was one of the most important ornithological artists of the nineteenth century. Probably because much of her short life was spent in the shadow of her husband, Elizabeth Gould’s significant artistic and scientific contribution to the art of natural history has been overlooked traditionally. However, her reputation has recently been reassessed in Andrea Hart and Ann Datta’s monograph Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould, published in 2023. The present watercolour is signed ‘Eliza Gould’ which was John Gould’s name for her and drawn when she was twenty-five. Her early work shows her talent as a draughtswoman, meticulous attention to detail and ability to capture the characteristics of a species most convincingly. The bobwhite quail, also known as the Virginia quail is a small but distinctive species native to much of North America, including the eastern coast of Mexico and the islands of the Caribbean. It has been in decline for the last half century due to habitat loss. In Maryland, they are found throughout the year in the eastern counties and less west of Chesapeake Bay. The bobwhite is a small bird, ranging from 9 to 11 inches in length and 13 to 15 inches in wingspan, weighing from 6 to 9 ounces each. While there are regional variations in appearance among males across its range, the females are similar in all locations. Females are generally dull brown with a buff-coloured throat, while males have a white throat and a distinctive brow stripe with a black border. Eastern bobwhites may have rufous-coloured breast feathers.

Pen and brown ink and wash over traces of pencil on laid paper 12 x 9.7 cm.; 4 ¾ x 3 3/4 inches Framed in a dark wood moulding 31 x 29 cm.; 12 1/4 x 11 1/2 inches Provenance: Dickinson

Signed on rowing boat: S.H. Grimm 1772, pen and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil on laid paper, inscribed on original mount with title, two gallery labels attached to backboard Oval, 31 x 38 cm; 12 1/4 x 14 15/16 inches Framed in a gilt frame 41 x 50 cm.; 16 x 19 5/8 inches Provenance: Frost and Reed, 9 August 1948; Robert Victor Cooke; Athelhampton House, Dorchester; by descent to Sir Robert Cooke; Patrick Cooke, until 2019 Grimm was born in Switzerland and moved to London in 1768 having spent three years in Paris. He made a number of views along the Thames shortly after his arrival in the capital. This view is taken slightly upstream from the wooden Fulham Bridge, which is visible in the drawing with a stage coach crossing. A further smaller view of the Berkshire House in 1772 with its distinctive sign by the waterside steps is recorded with the title ‘a view from Putney up the river’ (7 1/8 x 8 1/4 inches in the J. Braithwaite collection); this work is recorded as having been based on a study (Rotha Mary Clay 'Samuel Hieronymous Grimm', 1941, p. 66). This bridge was opened in 1729 in line with Fulham High Street with a slight curve on the Putney side in front of the church. The British Museum has a sketchbook by the artist of Thames views from Fulham to Kew (1919.7.12.25). In 1957, Athelhampton House was bought by the eminent surgeon Robert Victor Cooke to house his extensive collection of 16th and 17th-century furniture, paintings, tapestries and carvings. Following his wife’s death in 1964, he gave the house to his son Robert Cooke MP (later Sir Robert) on his marriage to his wife, Jennifer King, in 1966. Their son Patrick inherited the house in 1995.

Oil on board, inscribed verso: Grindlay, inscribed on old backing paper by one of Edward Grindlay’s children: An early James Gunn/My father admired it in the/Studio so James framed it/and gave it to him 22.4 x 14.2 cm.; 8 7/8 x 5 5/8 inches Frame size 34 x 24 cm.; 13 3/8 x 9 ½ inches Provenance Given by the artist to Edward Grindlay; By descent until 2021 This beautiful view of the Place de la Concorde was done in 1911-1912 when Gunn studied at the Académie Julian in Paris under Jean Paul Laurens. It is previously unrecorded and a significant addition to his rare small pictures of Paris. While in Paris Gunn started to make tonally delicate panels of the city on small boards, using a muted palette reminiscent of Whistler, capturing street scenes with tiny figures drawn with a few strokes of the brush. He also made regular visits to the Louvre to draw from the Old Masters and rented a room at 2 bis rue Perel. His small pictures of Paris are not numerous and are highly sought after. Gunn has painted this work from near the centre of the Place de la Concorde, looking towards the eastern end of the Champs Elysées, with the Grand Palais visible behind the trees of the Jardin des Champs-Elysées. The statue on the plinth is one of the famous Chevaux de Marly by Guillaume Costou, brought from the Chateau de Marly in 1719 and now in the Louvre. James Gunn attended drawing lessons from the age of five. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art, the Edinburgh College of Art before he went to Paris. Gunn returned to Edinburgh in 1912 and also spent time in London. Early in 1914, at the instigation of the London dealer W.B. Paterson, he travelled widely in Europe, sending pictures back home, and revisiting Paris and Étretat. He enlisted with the Artists Rifles in 1915. Gunn gave a speech to the Glasgow Art Club in November 1955 and reminisced about his early career, ‘…In Paris I studied at the Académie Julian under Jean Paul Laurens…I returned from Paris with a collection of sketches made in the streets and by the river. Many of these passed through the house of Anna. There they were seen and some were purchased by a dealer from Bond Street, W.B. Paterson, brother of the distinguished Scottish Academician, James. He gave me a contract, paid me a retaining fee and I undertook to provide him with not less than thirty pictures a year. At his instigation I went to Spain at the beginning of 1914. There I travelled, seeing and painting, till the echoes from Sarajevo warned that the good days were soon to end’. Edward ‘Teddy’ Grindlay and Gunn met in 1917 towards the end of WWI when they were commissioned into the 10th Scottish Rifles, the beginning of a life-long friendship. Gunn’s drawings of his fellow officers were published in a book ‘The 10th Battalion, The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles): a Record and a Memorial 1914-1918’. Grindlay saw this oil sketch in Gunn’s studio and admired it, so the artist had it framed and gave it to his friend. Edward and his wife Evelyn were both painted by Gunn who also painted a conversation piece of their house at 1 Newton Grove, Bedford Park in London in 1927. They later moved to Westcott near Dorking. They owned many paintings and drawings by Gunn who used his friend as a model for Maurice Baring in his famous conversation piece with Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG3654). He received commissions from many of the leading figures of the day and painted the Royal Family in another famous conversation piece at Royal Lodge, Windsor (NPG3778). Gunn had a successful career as a portrait painter and in 1961 was elected a member of the Royal Academy.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Carl Haag London 14 Sept 1849, oil on paper 35 x 25.3 cm.; 13 ½ x 10 inches, framed size 50 x 40 cm.; 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches Provenance Peter Ward-Jackson (1916-2015) Literature W. Karbach and C. Allison, Carl Haag Victorian Court Painter and Travelling Adventurer between Orient and Occident, 2019, no. 85 Having studied in Munich (where he worked as a miniaturist and book illustrator), Paris and Brussels the artist arrived in England in the spring of 1847. After spending that winter in Rome, he returned to London to study watercolour painting at the Royal Academy Schools. He almost lost a hand in an accidental explosion in December 1848. Haag’s first exhibited work at the Royal Academy in 1849 was entitled The Return from the Vineyards and the present work may have been made as a preparatory study. He became a member of the Old Water Colour Society in 1853. Haag travelled widely all over Europe and the Near East. He was popular with Royal and aristocratic patrons and spent the autumn of 1853 at Balmoral and the winter at Windsor. Peter Ward-Jackson was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum and a leading authority on furniture, prints and drawings, particularly ornament designs. His publications became standard works in these fields such as his catalogue of the V&A’s Italian Drawings (in two volumes, 1979-80).

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Nina Hamnett/Oct 1924/Paris, pencil, partial watermark ENGLAND 25.4 x 25.7 cm.; 10 x 10 1/8 inches Provenance By family descent until 2024 This 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.

KT516 Signed l.l.: h. Harpignies and indistinctly dated 70, watercolour 12 x 16 cm.; 4 ¾ x 6 ¼ inches Provenance Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, no. 26164, cat. No. 19; By descent from the purchaser The artist was a landscape painter of the Barbizon school. After following his family’s wish for him to go into business he started to study art in his late twenties. Following a few years in Italy he returned to France and fell in with Corot and the other artists of the Barbizon school. He and Corot travelled to Italy together in 1860. He exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1861. His work can be found in many of the world’s major museums.

Two, each signed l.l.and l.r., each inscribed l.c.: F. Concolr./life and F. Ocelot.of.Albany./Life, watercolour over pencil Each approx. 25 x 17.5 cm.; 9 ¾ x 6 7/8 inches The artist was self-taught and specialised in drawings of animals and field sports. From a wealthy Quaker family, Howitt took up art professionally when he encountered financial difficulties and became a drawing master in Ealing. He married Thomas Rowlandson's sister Elizabeth in 1779 and was part of Rowlandson's circle together with George Morland, Henry Wigstead and J.R. Smith.

Signed l.r.: W. HUNT, pencil, tiny sketches of figures and a list verso, on wove paper 12 x 8.4 cm.; 7 ¼ x 4 ¾ inches Provenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021 Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 370 Exhibited: '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 1819 14.5 x 10.9 cm.; 5 ¾ x 4 ¼ inches Provenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021 Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 369 Exhibited: 'Hunt Exhibition Fry Collection', 1967, no. 17 (2) This work dates from c. 1820.

Signed l.r.: W. HUNT, watercolour over pencil with scratching out 34 x 24.5 cm.; 13 3/8 x 9 5/8 inches Provenance J.P. Heseltine (1843-1929); Christopher W. Witt, Buckinghamshire; The Bourne Gallery, Surrey; David Pike (1936-2024) Literature J.P. Heseltine, John Varley and his Pupils, W. Mulready, J. Linnell and W. Hunt. Original Drawings in the Collection of J.P.H. 1918, ill. p. 13; John Witt, William Henry Hunt (1790-1864) Life and Works, with a catalogue, no. 539, ill. pl. 66 This shows Sarah Hunt, the artist’s wife, aged about twenty-one reading a letter. The couple were married in 1830 and Hunt used his wife as a model in 1830s, when this work was drawn. It may be compared with a similar example in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum entitled ‘Love Missive' (J. Witt, no. 529). The same chest and chair can be seen in both works. John Postle Heseltine (1843-1929) was a stockbroker and senior partner in the family firm, Heseltine, Powell & Co. He was a draughtsman and etcher, a collector oil paintings, drawings and watercolours of the English and Continental schools and a Trustee of the National Gallery who advised on purchases.

Signed l.r.: W HUNT, watercolour with bodycolour on artist’s board 16 x 20.3 cm; 6 1/4 x 8 inches Primroses were a favourite subject of Hunt’s, and one which he frequently exhibited in the 1840s and 1850s. Hunt was born with a deformation of his legs which restricted his movement and he worked mainly from the studio, as painting outside was difficult for him. He specialised in carefully drawn smale-scale still lifes like this one as a result and pioneered new techniques of watercolour, using stipple techniques in subtle colour combinations and achieving a brightness of colour by overlaying washes over white gouache.

Cecil Arthur Hunt, RWS (1873-1965) Mount Etna, Sicily Signed in pencil l.l.: C.A. Hunt, watercolour, inscribed on label attached to backboard: From Cecil & Phyllis Hunt/Christmas 1954/Etna 9 x 13,5 cm.; 3 ½ x 5 5/8 inches Frame size 15 x 29 cm.; 6 x 11 3/8 inches Provenance Agnew’s; Private collection UK Hunt and his wife, Phyllis made many trips to Sicily, an island which inspired the artist. They always stayed at the Casa Cuseni, the villa in Taormina belonging to his friend and art critic, R. H. Kitson, the painter and critic, who he first met at Cambridge. Casa Cuseni is now a museum and is, perhaps, best known for its dining room designed by Sir Frank Brangwyn (1867 – 1956).

KT 173 Signed l.r.: STANLEY INCHBOLD, watercolour over traces of pencil 37.3 x 26.5 cm; 14 5/8 x 10 3/8 inches Framed in a gilt moulding 52 x 41.3 cm.; 20 ½ x 16 ¼ inches Stanley Inchbold studied art under Sir Hurbert von Herkomer. He exhibited at the leading London galleries from 1884, namely at the Royal Academy and New Watercolour Society, and was also a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. He became a skilled landscape painter in both watercolour and oil, and travelled to paint all over Europe, America and North Africa. During the first twenty years of the twentieth century he produced many beautiful book illustrations and illustrated A.C. Inchbold's - Under the Syrian Sun (1906) and Lisbon and Cintra (1907). Other publications included A Beckett, The Spirit of the Downs (1909) and G.N. Whittingham The Home of Fadeless Splendour (1921). In The Literary World, 1906 Inchbold’s work was praised, ‘We do not remember to have seen before any such attempt as Mr. Inchbold makes to represent the wonderful variety of continually changing colour that is peculiar to the Holy Lands. Though these watercolours have their purely artistic value, they are specially interesting because of the vivid and sympathetic way in which they represent the cities and landscape of Palestine’. This is one of the most beautiful and impressive gates among the gates of the wall of Jerusalem, which was built under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. This is a central gate in the wall which faces north towards Nablus and Damascus. In Arabic it is called “Bab El Amud” (“the gate of the pillar”), probably after the pillar that stood at the centre of the gate’s courtyard during the Romano-Byzantine era. Turban-like decorations decorate the gate, and due to its importance, many observations points and guard towers were built there. During the Roman era, a stone-paved courtyard was added and at its centre stood the statue of the emperor. Two streets started from this courtyard, leading towards the south. To this day, two main streets split from Damascus Gate, preserving the Roman structure of this area: the right street is the Khan A- Zeit or Beit Habad street, and the left street is El Wad Street- or Hagai, commercial streets that cross the city from north to south.

This group of nineteen distinctive depictions of fruit and vegetables from South-East Asia are inscribed with titles in Indian English (possibly in Romanised Hindi) and drawn on European laid paper which is variously watermarked. There are three different numbering systems on the sheets. Many of the fruit and vegetables, such as the durian, are more commonly found in South-East Asia rather than on the Indian subcontinent, suggesting that it is possible that the drawings may have been made for a European patron in South-East Asia. Stylistically the drawings have many of the characteristics of the ‘Straits School’, a hybrid Indo-Chinese style. The accumulation of natural history drawings by officials of the British East India Company gave rise to the term ‘Company School’, now out of favour, which has been used to describe the work of Indian or Chinese artists for British patrons. The distinctive style is a result of a fusion of two artistic traditions, the European with its desire for realism and the Asian taste for a more stylised approach. The work of Chinese artists is rarer than that of Indian artists and tends to be a little later in date. British patrons commissioned local artists to draw the flora and fauna of India and other areas of South-East Asia. Such work is typically annotated with botanical notes in native script, romanised versions of native descriptions, Latin and with reference to the Linnaean system of classification, created by Carl Linnaeus (1707-78). The eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw an enormous rise of interest in Europe in the study of natural history by both scientists and amateurs. A knowledge of the subject was considered to be an important part of a liberal education and many people studied ‘natural philosophy’ and the various branches of natural history. Accurate drawings were vital tools in classification as well as a reminder of the excited reaction to new discoveries being made all over the known world. The collecting of specimens was the basis of most natural history drawings, plants were pressed and dried and the drawings recorded the specimen in its living shape and colours. This group of fruit and vegetables are found in various parts of South-East Asia. Some are common others are less well known. The collection is presented mounted in a hand-made solander box. Brinjala (Aubergine) Inscribed l.r.: Brinjala and numbered ninety-five, N106 and 96, watercolour, bodycolour and gum arabic on wove paper 31.7 x 20.5 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 1/8 inches Aubergine is known as brinjal in South-East Asia. Mangosteen Inscribed l.r.: mongostan, numbered ninety-seven. N 97 and 101, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper watermarked IFD 31.7 x 20.5 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 1/8 inches Mangosteens grow in South East Asia, particularly in Indonesia. It is a juicy, slightly acidic fruit and it is also used in traditional medicine. Ratahouli (pepper) Inscribed l.c.: Ratahouli, numbered ninety-five, N107 and 1010, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper watermarked HIS/GD 33 x 23 cm.; 13 x 9 inches Cashew Inscribed Rajab, numbered ninety-eight, N109 and 1012, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper 33 x 23 cm.; 13 x 9 inches The cashew tree is a tropical evergreen tree that produces the cashew seed and the cashew accessory fruit. The nut can be seen growing from the bottom of the fruits in the drawing, both green and then brown once it has ripened. Jambu Air (Szygium Aqueum) Inscribed l.c.: jambol, numbered A Hundred, N111 and 1019, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper watermarked HIS 33 x 23 cm.; 13 x 9 inches This is a special of the brush cherry tree; its common names include watery rose apple and bell fruit. Chilli Inscribed l.r.: fjoli, numbered ninety-one, N100 and 105, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper watermarked with a crest 33 x 23 cm.; 13 x 9 inches Pomegranate Inscribed l.r. ramangh, numbered A hundred and three, N114 and 1019, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper watermarked HIS 33 x 23 cm.; 13 x 9 inches Papaya Watercolour and gum arabic inscribed l.r. papaya, numbere ninety-nine, N100 and 1013, on laid paper watermarked with a crest 32.5 x 23 cm.; 12 ½ x 9 inches Durian Inscribed l.r.: doorian, numbered eighty-five, N94 and 96, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper 32.7 x 23 cm.; 12 ¾ x 9 inches The durian, with its spiny outer shell and moist, pungent flesh can weigh up to seven pounds. These large fruits grow on trees, have a short period of ripeness and their cultivation is difficult. The durian is famously not allowed on public transport in Singapore on account of its unpleasant smell. Lobed tropical tomato Inscribed l.r.: samati, numbered ninety, N100 and 109, watercolour with touches of gum arabic on laid paper 32 x 21 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 ¼ inches Berlimbing Inscribed l.r.: blinbingh, numbered A hundred and two, N113 and No 16, on laid paper watermarked HIS 33 x 23 cm.; 12 ¾ x 9 inches Berlimbing, also known as bling bling or berling berling, is a sour fruit used in curries. Buah Chiku (Sapodilla, Chikoo, Sapota or Naseberry) Inscribed l.r.: boa sawa, numbered ninety-three, N104 and 104, watercolour and gum arabic with touches of bodycolour on laid paper partially watermarked with the Strasburg Lily 33 x 23 cm.; 13 x 9 inches This appears to be Buah Sawo or Chiku, but the identification of this plant is open to question. Ban Branjahr (?) Inscribed l.r.: Ban Branjarh (?), numbered eight eight, N90 and 102, watercolour, bodycolour and gum arabic on laid paper, watermarked 31.7 x 20.5 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 1/8 inches This plant has not been identified. Lotus Inscribed l.c.: Fratil, numbered ninety-seven, N108 and 1011, watercolour and gum arabic, watermarked with a crest 33 x 23 cm.; 13 x 9 inches This drawing shows the lotus head with seeds after it has flowered. It is the seed of plants in the genus Nelumbo and the seeds are used in Asian cooking and traditional medicine. Melon (probably watermelon) Inscribed l.r.: patuka, numbered ninety-two N103 and 106, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper 33 x 23 cm.; 13 x 9 inches Mango Inscribed l.r.: Manga, numbered A Hundred and one, N112 and 1015, watercolour and gum arabic 31.7 x 20.5 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 1/8 inches Longan Inscribed l.r.: froita lanja, numbered eight nine, N99 and 103, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper watermarked with a crest 32.2 x 21 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 ¼ inches Rambutan Inscribed l.r.: frouita kafri, numbered eighty-six, N96 and 100, watercolour and gum arabic 32 x 21 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 ¼ inches Buah Gowok (Syzgium polycephalum) Inscribed l.r.: rambutan and numbered eighty-five, watercolour and gum arabic and pencil on laid paper 31.7 x 20.5 cm.; 12 ½ x 8 1/8 inches

KT636 Watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of gum arabic and scratching out 21 x 29 cm.; 8 ¼ x 11 3/8 inches Provenance Agnew’s, (1891); Private collection, Herefordshire until 2024 Samuel Jackson has been described as ‘the Father of the School’ of Bristol artists. His contemporary Francis Danby (1793-1861) wrote that ‘I know Jackson is a man of genius by being with him in Leigh Woods’ (see F. Greenacre and S. Stodard, ‘The Bristol Landscape-the Watercolours of Samuel Jackson’, 1986, p. 85). In 1820s Bristol was booming, the end of the Napoleonic Wars contributing to its prosperity as a trading city, the port of Bristol second only to London. This was the moment the ‘Bristol School of Artists’ flourished; Jackson and Francis Danby were its best-known members. Their original contribution to art in Britain was founded in their plein air practise in the countryside around the city, Leigh Woods, the Nightingale Valley and the Avon Gorge. Jackson was born in Bristol, the son of a partner in a firm of dry-salters with a Dutch grandmother, who dealt in the chemical products used in colour dyes and artists materials. It may be that in this business was the origin of the wide variety of pigments used in much of Jackson’s early work. Like many other Bristol artists Jackson travelled extensively and made frequent trips to Wales from 1825 through the 1830s and 1840s. In 1827 he visited Trinidad, St Vincent and Tobago in the West Indies. Scotland, the Lake District and Switzerland provided further subjects for his exhibited works. He lived in Bristol for his whole life becoming the elder statesman of the arts in the city. Jackson’s work is well represented at the British Museum, Bristol City Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art amongst other institutions.

KT383 Watercolour over pencil heightened with gum arabic and scratching out24.7 x 35.5 cm.; 9 7/8 x 14 inches Provenance: Christopher and Rosemary Warren until 2020 Exhibited: City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, ‘The Watercolours of Samuel Jackson 1794-1869’, 1986, no. 33 (private collection) This atmospheric and beautifully preserved watercolour dates from circa 1825. Jackson’s observation of gentle evening light and the reflections on the Avon are masterful. The well-recorded evening sketching meetings of the Bristol artists and amateurs in Leigh Woods at this time doubtless inspired Jackson to tackle this popular subject at dusk. Samuel Jackson has been described as ‘the Father of the School’ of Bristol artists. His contemporary Francis Danby (1793-1861) wrote that ‘I know Jackson is a man of genius by being with him in Leigh Woods…’(see F. Greenacre and S. Stodard, ‘The Bristol Landscape-the Watercolours of Samuel Jackson’, 1986, p. 85). His work is well represented at the British Museum, Bristol City Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art amongst other institutions.

Signed l.l.: John, pencil and black chalk 45.5 x 30.5 cm.; 17 7/8 x 12 inches Provenance Lady Hornby (1934-2021) Exhibited Augustus John, Olympia, 23-28 February 1999, no. 61 (no catalogue) This freely drawn, captivating drawing dates from c. 1904-1906. It epitomises the qualities of John’s fluent draughtsmanship and his ability to capture the essence of a sitter with apparent ease. Its immediacy, sureness and simplicity place it amongst his finest female portraits. Sheran Cazalet was the daughter of Peter Cazalet, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother’s, racing trainer. Her grandparents, William and Maud Cazalet, were friends of Augustus John. She married Sir Simon Hornby in 1968. He was the last family member to serve as chairman of WH Smith and served as chairman of the Design Council; he died in 2010. The couple lived at The Ham, Oxfordshire, where they assembled a collection of twentieth century works on paper, created a beautiful garden and entertained in style. Many of the contents of The Ham were sold at Christie’s, London, in 2012.

Stamped with estate stamp l.l., watercolour and pencil on tan paper, numbered verso in pencil: 67 (twice) 16.2 x 12.9 cm.; 6 3/8 x 5 1/8 inches Provenance The Estate of the artist, by descent In February 1904 Gwen John and Dorelia McNeill left Toulouse for Paris where they took a room in the Hôtel de Mont Blanc at 19 Boulevard Edgar Quinet in the 14th arrondissement. They acquired a female tortoiseshell cat with a white breast which Gwen John named after the street and drew frequently, and which would appear to be the subject of the present drawing which dates from around 1905-1908. Gwen John had many cats throughout her life, and when Edgar Quinet disappeared in 1908 she wrote a poem in her memory entitled Au Chat which she sent to Rodin. Her remarkable cat drawings capture the personality of the animals and are understandably acclaimed.

Stamped with studio stamp l.r. and inscribed: Venice, watercolour 15 x 23.5 cm.; 5 7/8 x 5 ½ inches, framed size 32 x 39 cm.; 12 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches From an album of watercolours by the artist. Johnson was born in Birmingham where he studied under Samuel Restell Lines. He was then a pupil of William James Müller in London from circa 1842/3-1845, accompanying him to Lycia at the time of Sir Charles Fellowes’ expedition in 1843. The artists travelled for around eight months, spending time in Xanthus, Pinara and Tlos before going to to Rhodes and Smyrna and presumably visited Venice at this time. Johnson, like Müller, continued to work on subjects from this trip after his return to England. On Johnson’s return to London, he became a founder member of the Clipstone Street Academy, along with Müller, participating in its life drawing and painting sessions with a variety of models from the streets. Johnson made sketching trips with David Cox to North Wales from 1844. The artist was elected an associate member of the R.I. in 1868 and a full member two years later. His work can be found in many museum collections, including the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Signed, inscribed and dated below: Drawn 1785, by I. Johnson. Woodbridge.-/This OAK stands in Winfarthing, Norfolk, on the Estate of the Rt. Hon: Lord ALBERMARLE./Circumference at Base 51 Feet, at three Feet high 32 Feet, at six Feet, 30 Feet Circum. Height 60 Feet., watercolour and bodycolour over pencil with pen and black ink. Image size 34 x 29 cm.; 13 3/8 x 11 3/8 inches, sheet size 40 x 33 cm.; 15 ¾ x 13 inches Provenance Simon Carter, Woodbridge; R. Geoffrey Smith, Berveriche Manor Farm, Middleton; Martyn Gregory Gallery, London; Hugo Burge (1972-2023) Literature Huon Mallalieu, Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists up to 1920, vol. III, 1990, p. 191, ill.; John Blatchley, Isaac Johnson of Woodbridge: Georgian Surveyor and Artist, 2014, pp. 12-16 The artist was a surveyor and antiquarian as well as an artist who lived in Woodbridge, Suffolk for his adult life. Around 1785 he was considering a volume illustrating the most remarkable trees of Norfolk and Suffolk which never came to fruition, but for which the current drawing would have been a likely candidate. White's History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Norfolk, 1883 describes the tree which stood on the estate of the Earl of Albermarle: The celebrated 'Winfarthing Oak,' probably the largest in England except the one at Cowthorpe, in Yorkshire, stands near the Lodge farmhouse, and is a grand and picturesque old ruin. It measures 70 feet round at the roots, and 40 feet in the middle of the main stem, and must have been at one time a magnificent spreading tree, with enormous arms. It is traditionally said to have been called the 'Old Oak' in the time of the Conqueror, and is usually considered to be more than 1200 years old. It is now a mere shell, bleached snowy white, and capable of containing a large number of persons in its interior. It still retains vitality on its south side, and three years ago a rook's nest was built in its branches.

Oil on panel 22 x 27 cm.; 8 ¾ x 10 5/8 inches Provenance The artist’s widow, Lady Kelly; Michael Parkin Fine Art Ltd; From whom purchased by J.G. Cluff, private collection U.K. until 2022 Born in London of Irish descent, Kelly was educated at Cambridge University, later living and studying art in Paris where he met Degas, Monet, Renoir and Sickert. Whistler was also an early influence as were Cézanne and Gaugin. Kelly was an enthusiastic traveller, visiting many countries from Egypt to China. His sketches of his travels are pleasingly spontaneous and tend to be painted more freely than his finished portraits. He became a successful society portraitist whose sitters included Somerset Maugham, whom he painted several times, and he undertook numerous state portraits. Kelly is represented in many public collections, including the Tate, which holds seven works. He had retrospective exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries in 1950 and in 1957 at the RA. He was elected RA in 1930, was the Academy's Keeper from 1943-45 and President, defeating Augustus John in the election, from 1949-54. Kelly held a number of official positions, such as membership of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, 1938-43, and was knighted in 1945. Between 1909 and 1970 Kelly exhibited over 300 works at the RA. During his lifetime his work became well known through popular prints.

Sir Gerald Festus Kelly, P.R.A. (British 1879-1972) The Great Wall of China Oil on board Exhibited Martyn Gregory Gallery, ‘Modern British Painters’, October 1988, Catalogue no. 52, no. 34 This is a study for a painting of the same size of the Great Wall of China exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, 1938, no.45 and the Royal Academy, London, Exhibition of Works by Sir Gerald Kelly, 1957, no.231. Born in London of Irish descent, Kelly was educated at Cambridge University, later living and studying art in Paris where he met Degas, Monet, Renoir and Sickert. Whistler was also an early influence as were Cézanne and Gaugin. Kelly was an enthusiastic traveller, visiting amongst other countries China, Spain, America, South Africa and Burma, where he painted some of his most characteristic and charming figure studies. He became a successful society portraitist whose sitters included Somerset Maugham, whom he painted several times, and he undertook numerous state portraits. Kelly is represented in many public collections, including the Tate, which holds seven works. He had retrospective exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries in 1950 and in 1957 at the RA. He was elected RA in 1930, was the Academy's Keeper from 1943-45 and President, defeating Augustus John in the election, from 1949-54. Kelly held a number of official positions, such as membership of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, 1938-43, and was knighted in 1945. Between 1909 and 1970 Kelly exhibited over 300 works at the RA. During his lifetime his work became well known through popular prints.

Laura Knight, DBE, RA, RWS (1877-1970) Anna Pavlova rehearsing The Bacchanal, c. 1910-1911 Signed l.l.: Laura Knight, oil on canvas 45.5 x 41 cm.; 17 5/8 x 16 1/8 inches Provenance Peter and Vera Chadwick, 1977 (according to an inscription on the previous frame); Harry Greatorex, 1988; His sale at Sotheby’s, unidentified sale 1988(?), lot 73; Private collection U.K. until 2025 Knight captures the grace, elegance and kinetic energy of the most famous ballerina of her day on stage performing her most dynamic and erotic role. Pavlova (1881 – 1931) visited London with Sergei Diaghilev's company for the first time in the summer of 1910. She caused a sensation with her dramatic Dance Bacchanal from Pepita's ballet The Seasons, choreographed by Mikhail Fokine, which was to become one of her signature roles. An erotic duet, performed with Mikhail Mordkin saw the dancers throwing garlands and striking sensual poses with theatrical abandon, wearing Greek tunics. Knight was mesmerised by the Ballets Russes when they performed in London during the years before the First World War. In particular, she became enamoured with the dancer Anna Pavlova. In her autobiography, 1965, Knight wrote: ‘The whole look of Pavlova had perfection of finish … But whatever the beauty of form may have been, she possessed an attraction all her own ... a something not of this world.’ (L. Knight, The Magic of a Line, p. 161). In 1911 she made sketches of Pavlova at the Palace Theatre, continuing her interest in the figure in motion. Pavlova often invited Knight to her home, The Ivy House in Golders Green next to Hampstead Heath, which she bought in 1912, so she could sketch her. Knight drew Pavlova’s portrait many times as well as sketching her backstage and made small enamel pieces recording her dancing. Her work helped cement the dancer’s reputation in Britain and beyond. Pavlova settled in London after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Henry Lamb (Australian/British 1883 – 1960) Inscribed l.r.: Edwin John, pencil Provenance The Estate of the artist; Davis & Langdale Company, New York (DLA 3328); Where purchased by Sarah John (1946 - 2024); Bequeathed to the present owner This 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).

KT584 Signed and dated l.r.: SJ Lamorna Birch/.1916, watercolour with pen and red ink and bodycolour over traces of pencil on artist’s board, signed, inscribed and dated verso in pencil: No 5’The Valley of Lamorna’/SJ. Lamorna Birch RWS/RBS/Lamorna./Penzance., in the original frame made by J.H. Steer Ltd. 36.5 x 54 cm.; 14 3/8 x 21 ¼ inches Provenance W.G. Gill Esq, Aberdeenshire, bought from the RWS exhibition Exhibited Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, 1916, no. 5 The artist settled in Lamorna in 1892 and lived with his wife at Flagstaff Cottage. He exhibited extensively at the Royal Academy. Shades of British Impressionism Lamorna Birch and his Circle was shown at the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery in October 2004. The exhibition explored his links with Henry Scott Tuke and Thomas Cooper Gotch and their emphasis on colour and light, truth and social realism.

Head and shoulders, pen and brown ink and wash 22.9 x 17.3 cm; 9 x 10 3/4 inches Provenance: Private collection, UK, bought at a charity auction at the Finchingfield Guildhall Landseer’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.

Pencil 9 x 15 cm.; 3 ½ x 6 inches Provenance The artist's studio sale, Christie's, 8 - 15 May 1874, bt. by Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd. (23366); J.M.M., a Christmas present from C. 1962

Signed with initials l.r., pen and brown ink 14.5 x 12 cm.; 5 ½ x 4 ¾ inches Provenance: Mrs F.L. Evans; With Colnaghi, 1951, catalogue no. 59 Duncan Beresford-Jones until 2000 The 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.

KT311 b Signed and inscribed on original mount: La Porte./Keswick Lake-/Pocklington Island./Crosthwaite Church./Skiddaw, watercolour over pencil 22.7 x 37.7 cm; 9 x 14 7/8 inches Provenance: Christie’s, London, 17 November 1970, lot 10;The Pemberton collection bought from the above sale, until 2019 Laporte was a drawing master who exhibited work at the Royal Academy and British Institution from 1779. Dr Thomas Monro was one of his pupils. He published several manuals on landscape watercolour painting, the most famous of which 'The Progress of a Water-Coloured Drawing', c. 1802, went into several editions. It showed fourteen stages in the outline and colouring of a watercolour. He visited the Lakes in the 1790s and there are a number of drawings by him in the collection of The Wordsworth Trust, of which several are of Derwentwater. His work can also be found in the collections of the Tate, the British Museum and the Whitworth Art Gallery.

Pencil and black and red chalk, in original frame 42 x 34.5 cm.; 16 ½ x 13 5/8 inches Provenance: With Dorothy Roberts, Lincoln, 1996; Acquired by the previous owner in May 1996 from Douglas Turner; Private collection U.K. until 2021 Literature: Kenneth Garlick, ‘A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Pastels of Sir Thomas Lawrence’ in The Walpole Society; 1962–64, xxxix, 1964, p. 244 This unpublished drawing by Lawrence is an addition to a group of three known portraits of Munia. Lawrence became friendly with the Angerstein family in about 1790, when John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823) took charge of his financial affairs. Lawrence did paintings and drawings of most of the family, which included John Julius’ son, John Angerstein, M.P. (1772/3–1858), who married, in 1799, Amelia Lock, daughter of William Lock, who was also a friend and patron of Lawrence. Isabel Smith, or Munia, was nurse to the couple’s five children at Woodlands, the family residence which John Julius had built at Blackheath in 1770s. She was described as Russian in the papers of Miss May Rowley, a direct descendant of Elizabeth Julia Angerstein, daughter of John Julius. (Archive reference number NG14/230/1). This smaller version of this composition (measuring 35.5 x 30.25 cm; 14 x 11 15/16 inches) from May Rowley is now in the collection of Tate (T00768). The Tate drawing is inscribed on the back ‘This is a drawing of my Nurse Isabel Smith, called Munia, buried at Nh Willingham Lincolne. Wm Angerstein, drawn by Sr Thos Lawrence at Woodlands’. The Tate drawing originally belonged to Elizabeth, John Angerstein’s daughter, and was bequeathed to the nation in 1965 by May Rowley, who had inherited it from her grandfather Richard Freeman Rowley, Elizabeth’s husband. A second version, the same larger size as the present drawing, is in the possession of Viscount Daventry at Arbury, and was exhibited at Bristol City Art Gallery, ‘Exhibition of works by Sir Thomas Lawrence P.R.A.’, 1951, no. 48. Garlick records a further smaller version of this subject measuring 35.6 x 30.2 cm as being in the possession of Miss Keightley in 1925. She inherited the drawing from her father Archibald Keightley who was Lawrence’s executor. This drawing, in poor condition, is now in the Royal Academy (LAW/3/1). This work was illustrated in R.Brimley Johnson, Mrs Delaney, 1925, rep. facing p. 256 (incorrectly called Mrs Delaney). The financier and philanthropist John Julius Angerstein was born in St Petersburg in 1735 to a German family who had settled in Russia. He emigrated to England in about 1749 and built a fortune, partly from a career in the City of London, developing Lloyd’s insurance business. An active philanthropist, he was a patron of Lawrence’s and the artist advised him on his picture acquisitions together with Benjamin West. Angerstein started collecting around 1790. On Angerstein’s death the British Government purchased thirty-eight of his pictures and took over the lease of his Pall Mall town house. The public was able to view the collection here before the National Gallery, founded in 1824, was constructed in Trafalgar Square and it formed the nucleus of the gallery’s collection. Four paintings from the Pall Mall house were not purchased, a Reynolds portrait of Angerstein’s first wife and their first child, and three Fuseli paintings after Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’which were returned to Angerstein’s heirs, and which remained at Woodlands until 1870. For further information about Woodlands and the collection kept there see Susanna Avery-Quash, ‘The lover of the fine arts is well amused with the choice pictures that adorn the house’: John Julius Angerstein’s ‘other’ art collection at his suburban villa, Woodlands https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/33/3/fhx055/4773890 (Journal of the History of Collections, Volume 33, Issue 3, November 2021, fhx055, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhx055 See also Anthony Twist, A Life of John Julius Angerstein, 1735–1823: Widening circles of finance, philanthropy, and the arts in eighteenth-century London (London, 2006).

Signed l.c.: E. Lear, pencil with watercolour, pen and black ink and touches of gold 17.7 x 23 cm.; 7 x 9 inches These charming, quirky drawings are characteristic early works by Lear, dating from the late 1820s or early 1830s when he was establishing himself as an ornithological artist. They relate to a group of drawings which Lear gave to Mrs Godfrey Wentworth, who supported his employment by the Zoological Society in 1831, and whom he credited with launching him as an artist. They are imaginary, fanciful subjects drawn with not a little humour, resembling the stylised watercolours of birds painted on late eighteenth century porcelain. Robert McCracken Peck has made the interesting suggestion that Lear and his sister Ann may have been thinking of approaching ceramics companies with them (see Robert McCracken Peck, The Natural History of Edward Lear, 2016, pp. 27-9). Two surviving family albums from the late 1820s, containing a mixture of similar natural history subjects by Edward Lear and his sisters Ann and Sarah, are in the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University (MS Typ 55.4 and 55.27). Sir Edward Strachey was a man of letters and friend of Lear’s, who wrote an introduction to Nonsense Songs in 1895. He lived at Sutton Court, Chew Magna in Somerset and was a neighbour of Lear’s close friend Chichester Fortescue, the Liberal politician whom Lear first met in Rome in 1845.

Signed l.l.: E. Lear, pencil with watercolour 23 x 17.7 cm.; 9 x 7 inches These charming, quirky drawings are characteristic early works by Lear, dating from the late 1820s or early 1830s when he was establishing himself as an ornithological artist. They relate to a group of drawings which Lear gave to Mrs Godfrey Wentworth, who supported his employment by the Zoological Society in 1831, and whom he credited with launching him as an artist. They are imaginary, fanciful subjects drawn with not a little humour, resembling the stylised watercolours of birds painted on late eighteenth century porcelain. Robert McCracken Peck has made the interesting suggestion that Lear and his sister Ann may have been thinking of approaching ceramics companies with them (see Robert McCracken Peck, The Natural History of Edward Lear, 2016, pp. 27-9). Two surviving family albums from the late 1820s, containing a mixture of similar natural history subjects by Edward Lear and his sisters Ann and Sarah, are in the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University (MS Typ 55.4 and 55.27). Sir Edward Strachey was a man of letters and friend of Lear’s, who wrote an introduction to Nonsense Songs in 1895. He lived at Sutton Court, Chew Magna in Somerset and was a neighbour of Lear’s close friend Chichester Fortescue, the Liberal politician whom Lear first met in Rome in 1845.

Signed l.r.: E. Lear, pencil with watercolour and touches of gold 23 x 17.7 cm.; 9 x 7 inches Provenance (for all the bird drawings) Sir Edward Strachey, Bt., (1812-1901) and by descent to the previous owners The drawings are available individually or as a group These charming, quirky drawings are characteristic early works by Lear, dating from the late 1820s or early 1830s when he was establishing himself as an ornithological artist. They relate to a group of drawings which Lear gave to Mrs Godfrey Wentworth, who supported his employment by the Zoological Society in 1831, and whom he credited with launching him as an artist. They are imaginary, fanciful subjects drawn with not a little humour, resembling the stylised watercolours of birds painted on late eighteenth century porcelain. Robert McCracken Peck has made the interesting suggestion that Lear and his sister Ann may have been thinking of approaching ceramics companies with them (see Robert McCracken Peck, The Natural History of Edward Lear, 2016, pp. 27-9). Two surviving family albums from the late 1820s, containing a mixture of similar natural history subjects by Edward Lear and his sisters Ann and Sarah, are in the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University (MS Typ 55.4 and 55.27). Sir Edward Strachey was a man of letters and friend of Lear’s, who wrote an introduction to Nonsense Songs in 1895. He lived at Sutton Court, Chew Magna in Somerset and was a neighbour of Lear’s close friend Chichester Fortescue, the Liberal politician whom Lear first met in Rome in 1845.

Inscribed and dated l.l.: Monte Generoso/1879, and further inscribed with colour notes, pen and brown ink over pencil 25 x 51.5 cm; 9 7/8 x 20 1/4 inches £8500 Lear returned to Varese and Monte Generoso, on the border between Italy and Switzerland between lakes Lugano and Como, from June 29 to September 22 1879. He stayed at Mendrisio, across the Swiss border in Ticino. He enjoyed sketching the views south across the plains, as in the present watercolour and the mountains stretching up to the Alps. Marianne North the botanical artist came to Como towards the end of his stay and they made a trip to Monte Civita near Monza together. This drawing is taken from a similar vantage point to that of an oil of the same subject dated 1880 in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum (WA196.39). An unpublished poem “The Lays of the Octopods’ about the perils of mass tourism at Monte Generoso has recently come to light in the British Library.

Signed l.l.: E. Lear, pencil with watercolour, gum arabic and pen and black ink 17.7 x 23 cm.; 7 x 9 inches These charming, quirky drawings are characteristic early works by Lear, dating from the late 1820s or early 1830s when he was establishing himself as an ornithological artist. They relate to a group of drawings which Lear gave to Mrs Godfrey Wentworth, who supported his employment by the Zoological Society in 1831, and whom he credited with launching him as an artist. They are imaginary, fanciful subjects drawn with not a little humour, resembling the stylised watercolours of birds painted on late eighteenth century porcelain. Robert McCracken Peck has made the interesting suggestion that Lear and his sister Ann may have been thinking of approaching ceramics companies with them (see Robert McCracken Peck, The Natural History of Edward Lear, 2016, pp. 27-9). Two surviving family albums from the late 1820s, containing a mixture of similar natural history subjects by Edward Lear and his sisters Ann and Sarah, are in the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University (MS Typ 55.4 and 55.27). Sir Edward Strachey was a man of letters and friend of Lear’s, who wrote an introduction to Nonsense Songs in 1895. He lived at Sutton Court, Chew Magna in Somerset and was a neighbour of Lear’s close friend Chichester Fortescue, the Liberal politician whom Lear first met in Rome in 1845.

Extensively inscribed and dated in pencil and in pen and brown ink: Quarries of Assouan AM 11.30- 1 PM January 27.1867 all one color [sic] pinky drab oker [sic], numbered (242) and with further colour notes, pen and brown ink and watercolour over pencil heightened with white 29 x 53 cm.; 11 3/8 x 20 ¾ inches Provenance Mrs R.K. Judges; The Fine Art Society, January 1993, where bought by Martin Davies (1924-2023) This beautifully drawn watercolour dates from Lear’s second trip up the Nile and his third visit to Egypt in the winter of 1866-1867, when he travelled with his Canadian cousin, Archie Jones. The men met in Luxor and visited Esneh, Edfu and Denderah, and had reached Philae by the end of January. Lear found his cousin irritating due to his habit of whistling and his lack of enthusiasm for the temples. It was nevertheless a productive trip for the artist, who made many drawings. He was particularly interested in the country between the First and Second Cataracts which was new to him. Another drawing from this trip dating from 30 January of the first Cataract is numbered 267 (formerly in the collection of Dayton International), indicating that he produced twenty-five drawings in 3 days. He wrote to Lady Waldegrave on 9th March 1867 that the Nubian desert was, ‘a sad, stern, uncompromising landscape, dark ashy purple lines of hills, piles of granite rocks, fringes of palm, and ever and anon astonishing ruins of oldest temples’ (Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear: Selected Letters, London, 1988, pp. 208-209). This detailed view accurately depicts the ancient granite quarries at Aswan mined by the ancient Egyptians. A line of unfinished carved granite can be seen lying in the sand in the background. When the construction of the Aswan Dam began in 1960, it became apparent that the ancient temples and surrounding area would be submerged and destroyed by the rising waters of the newly created Lake Nasser. UNESCO led an international fund-raising campaign to relocate them to higher ground by 1968. Martin Davies (1924-2023) was the President of the Egypt Society of Bristol, who visited and photographed the second cataract twice in 1960s before the Aswan Dam was moved. He amassed an interesting collection of views of Egypt.

Signed and dated l.r.: Edward Lear. Del 1842, inscribed l.l.: Villa Adriana., pencil heightened with white 24 x 36.7 cm.; 9 3/8 x 14 3/8 inches Provenance Phillip’s, London, 11 November 1997, lot 45; Private collection U.K. until 2023 £8500 Lear 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 crisply drawn view with white highlights of the Villa Adriana is a fine example of the artist’s pencil drawing, which he favoured early in his Italian soujourn and shows the influence of James Duffield Harding. A related drawing of the Villa Adriana in upright format is in the collection of the British Museum (P_1892-1119-15). The same figures can be seen in the foreground and the compositional emphasis is on the trees on the right of the composition. Situated on a low plain on the slopes of the Tiburtine Hills, Hadrian’s Villa was the largest villa of the Roman Empire, built over an area of more than one hundred hectares.

Inscribed and dated l.r.: Patti 4 July 1847, inscribed: sloping towards x which is a very deep stuffy vegetable dell and with colour notes, numbered 212, pen and brown ink with pencil 20.2 x 44.5 cm.; 8 1/8 x 17 ½ inches, framed size 37 x 60.5 cm.; 14 1/2 x 23 3/4 inches Provenance Mary Ann Streeter (1932-2023), Boston, by descent until 2025 £5500 Lear travelled to Sicily between May 3 and July 15, 1847, with John Joshua Proby, later the 2nd Earl of Carysfort. They were to make two other tours together that year, to Calabria and Naples. Patti is a village in North-Eastern Sicily in the province of Messina between Milazzo and Capo Calvà, which includes the ancient Graeco-Roman village of Tindari with its famous Sanctuary. After graduating from Radcliffe College (Harvard University) with a degree in Fine Arts, Mary Ann Streeter moved to London for a year and started buying Lear watercolours in the late 1950s. She built up a large collection of Lear’s work.

Signed with monogram l.r., inscribed l.l.: near Calikut., watercolour heightened with touches of bodycolour Provenance Franklin Lushington (1823-1901) and thence by descent Lear was invited to India by his friend and patron Lord Northbrook who was appointed Viceroy in 1871, and his journey there was the last and longest of his life. He was overwhelmed by the colour and vitality of India and enjoyed the bustle of Viceregal life. Calicut, or present-day Kozhikode, is on the Malabar coast in Kerala and was a centre of the Indian spice trade. Edward Lear arrived there in October 1874, just as the monsoon began. He was warned about the dangers of contracting fever but stayed, despite the pouring rain, until the skies were clear enough to draw. He described the roads around the city as “of such redundant beauty one can hardly dream.” Franklin Lushington, Lear’s close friend and first owner of this drawing, was the son of Edmund Henry Lushington. He was appointed judge to the Supreme Court of Justice in the Ionian Islands in 1855 and Lear went with him to live in Corfu. They first met in Malta in 1849, where Franklin’s elder brother Henry was Chief Secretary to the government. On his death, Lear left all his papers to Lushington, who later destroyed most of them.

KT734 Edward Lear (British 1812-1888) Sunset at Philae, Egypt Inscribed and dated l.r.: Philae. Feby. 3. 1854/from Biggeh. Sunset. P 18 and extensively further inscribed with colour notes, pen and brown ink and watercolour over traces of pencil 33 x 50 cm.; 13 x 19 ¾ inches Provenance Appleby Brothers, 27 William IV Street, Trafalgar Square, London, no. M2139; Private collection, U.K. until 2026 Lear visited Philae for the second time in late January and early February 1854. He had intended to travel up the Nile with the artist Holman Hunt but left Cairo earlier than expected when the opportunity arose after Christmas 1853, having met Thomas Seddon (1821-1856) and the explorer Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890). His views of the island were often taken from a vantage point which situated it in the landscape, showing the First Cataract, the rocky barrier that divided ancient Egypt from Nubia and the Nile. Here he enjoys painting the rocks in different shades of grey as the sun goes down, its light illuminating the temple with a golden glow. Lear spent ten days exploring the island and set up camp in the Temple of Isis. Many parties of English travellers visited, and Lear entertained some of them with dinner and music on the Temple Terrace. He adored the place and wrote that it was ‘more like a real fairy island than anything else I can compare it to. It is very small, & was formerly all covered with temples, of which the ruins of 5 or 6 now only remain. The great Temple of Isis, on the terrace of which I am now writing, is so extremely wonderful that no words can give the least idea of it. The Nile is divided here into several channels, by other rocky islands, & beyond you see the desert & the great granite hills of Assouan’ (Lear in a letter to his sister Ann, 7th February 1854, quoted in V. Noakes, ‘Edward Lear’, 1988, p, 124). He made many drawings of Philae, including a similar work dated a day later, 4 February 1854, from a different vantage point which is in the Ashmolean Museum. Lear painted Philae in oils around twenty times. He wrote on his 1867 trip that ‘In no place- it seems to me, can the variety & simplicity of colours be so well studied as in Egypt; in no place are the various beauties of shadow more observable, or more interminably numerous (Diary, 25.ii.67). Bigeh is an island and archaeological site in the Nile, formerly in the First Cataract of the river and it controlled the access to ancient Upper Egypt and Nubia. It was sacred to the ancient Egyptians who believed that Osiris was buried on the island. Its sacred temple was only accessible to priests. When the construction of the Aswan Dam began in 1960, it became apparent that the ancient temples and surrounding area would be submerged and destroyed by the rising waters of the newly created Lake Nasser. An international fund-raising campaign by UNESCO led to their relocation to higher ground by 1968.

Signed with initials and dated u.r.: A.L./1880, sepia wash over pencil with a touch of red chalk on laid paper, in the original frame 44.5 x 32 cm.; 17 ½ x 12 ½ inches Provenance Frank Edward Bliss until 1923; (L. 265 and 988 supplement), his sale at Christie’s, London, 9 February 1923, lot 25; Arthur Crossland, Heaton Mount, Bradford, His sale at Christie’s, London, 3 February 1956, lot 59, bt, Meatyard; Arnold Fellows collection no. 322; Bequeathed to Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall until sold by a charitable trust, 2023 Exhibited City of Bradford Corporation Art Gallery Jubilee Exhibition, 1930, no. 453 This powerful drawing is a fine example of the extraordinary technique of Alphonse Legros. A painter, sculptor and etcher, Legros was born in Dijon and spent his early career in Paris. Legros was encouraged by Whistler to come to London in 1863. He was Professor of Fine Art at the Slade from 1875-1892, where his insistence on the quality of line laid the foundation for the Slade tradition of fine draughtsmanship. He set out to broaden the syllabus, introducing etching and, in 1884, classes in medal making. Frank Edward Bliss (1847-1930) was born in America and moved to London in 1886. He amassed a large collection of modern prints from 1905 and put together a famous collection of the work of Legros (see the British Museum letterbook for 1929). He sold them in three sales in 1913, 1920 and 1923. Bliss returned to the USA in 1923 to live in California. Arnold Fellows was a pupil at Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall, between 1911 and 1917. He became a master of the school for a brief period, before moving to spend the remainder of his life as a teacher at Chigwell School in Essex. Fellows devoted much of his life to collecting art, notably works on paper, and eventually donated his entire collection to Queen Mary’s Grammar School. He was the author of The wayfarer's companion: England's history in her buildings and countryside, published by Oxford University Press, 1937.

Stamped with the artist’s stamp l.l., watercolour over pencil heighted with white on rough buff paper 32.3 x 46.5 cm; 12 5/8 x 18 ¼ inche Provenance: Christie’s, London, the Artist’s Studio sale, March 13 -17, 1884 (13 gns); The Fine Art Society, London, April 1966; Hermione Hobhouse (1933-2014); By family descent until 2020 Exhibited: Glasgow International Exhibition, 1888 Literature: Delia Millar, 'The Victorian Watercolours in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen', 2 vols., London, 1995, no. 3422 Osborne House on the Isle of Wight was a summer retreat built for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert between 1845 and 1851, designed by Albert himself in the style of an Italian palazzo. The stone lions shown here at the foot of the steps, copied from the antique, were acquired in January 1851, and were in place by 9 March 1851. The groups of children possibly include Princess Helena and Princess Louise, described by their mother as 'looking extremely pretty in little blue silk polkas, with white silk hats' (Queen Victoria’s Journal, 15 August 1851). There is another smaller version of this watercolour in the Royal Collection dated August 1851 (RCIN 919847). The present drawing would seem to be the preliminary drawing as passages are unfinished. The version in the Royal Collection has an additional figure group at the bottom of the stairs. Leitch also drew two further watercolours of Osborne under construction drawn circa 1847 (RCIN 91982 and 91983). William Leighton Leitch was one of Queen Victoria's favourite watercolour artists, and she commissioned many watercolours from him for her View Albums. Leitch also taught watercolour to the Queen and her children, all of whom copied his work. He stayed at Osborne from 31 July 1851 and for most of August that year. It has been suggested that this drawing may have been made as a drawing lesson for some members of the Royal Family. Hermione Hobhouse was an architectural historian and preservation campaigner. During her distinguished career, during which she acted as secretary of ‘The Victorian Society’ from 1976-1983, she wrote numerous books, including Prince Albert: His Life and Work, 1983. Stamped with the artist’s stamp l.l., watercolour over pencil heighted with white on rough buff paper 32.3 x 46.5 cm; 12 5/8 x 18 ¼ inche Provenance: Christie’s, London, the Artist’s Studio sale, March 13 -17, 1884 (13 gns); The Fine Art Society, London, April 1966; Hermione Hobhouse (1933-2014); By family descent until 2020 Exhibited: Glasgow International Exhibition, 1888 Literature: Delia Millar, 'The Victorian Watercolours in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen', 2 vols., London, 1995, no. 3422