Augustus Edwin John, O.M., R.A. Portrait of a lady in profile

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: To Fitzroy Carrington/hommage/Albert Sterner/1906, red, black and white chalks on buff paper, with fragmentary original label66.6 x 41.7 cm.; 26 1⁄4 x 16 3/8 inchesProvenanceFrederick Keppel & Co., no. 5542;Bourne Gallery, Reigate, U.K.;Private collection U.K. until 2022Albert Sterner was born in London to American parents. He started his artistic training at the Art Institute in Birmingham and continued his studies under Gustave Boulanger, Jules Lefebvre, and Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1879, Sterner went to America, working initially as a lithographer and draughtsman in Chicago. In 1885, he founded his own workshop in New York and in 1907 was appointed chairman of the Society of Illustrators. In 1934, Sterner became a member of the National Academy of Design.Sterner’s extensive work for the press included Harper's, Quiver, Pick-me-up, English Illustrated, Black and White, Life, and Scribner's. He illustrated many literary works including L'ennui, Madame! by D. Meunier, Prue and I by G.W. Curtis and Fenwick's Career by Mrs Ward. He exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Français, winning an award in 1891 and a bronze medal in 1900 at the Universal Exhibition as well as a gold medal in Munich in 1905. Sterner’s work can be found in many US and international museums.Fitzroy Carrington (1869 – 1954) was an English-born American editor who became known as a leading authority on prints, particularly those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Born in England he moved to the United States in 1886.From 1892 to 1913 he worked closely with Frederick Keppel & Co., the New York print dealers founded in 1868, and joined the firm after 1899. From 1911-1917 he was editor of The Print Collector’s Quarterly. In 1912 he became curator of prints at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He published several books about prints and print collecting.The elegant subject of this drawing is his wife, Charlotte Austen Carrington, née Singleton. The couple had a son Harold, born in 1900.

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

Signed l.l.: Kate Gardiner Hastings, red and black chalk46.7 x 36.9 cm.; 18 ½ x 14 ½ inchesEllen Terry (1847 - 1928) is portrayed against a background of blossom. Her hair is pinned behind and she wears a blouse with a frilled collar and a knotted scarf. The background, costume and pose bear a strong resemblance to other portraits of Terry as Ophelia.The famous actress was born in Coventry in actors’ lodgings, where her parents were on tour, and she started acting as a child. She married the much older artist, George Frederick Watts in 1864, but they separated within a year. He painted her in many guises, including as Ophelia and Joan of Arc. Terry became known as the Painters’ Actress and was painted and photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron, John Singer Sargent and Aubrey Beardsley, amongst many others.Terry and the architect and designer Edward William Godwin (1833-1886) had two children, Edith Craig and Edward Gordon Craig. She returned to the stage in 1872 to establish herself as a leading actress with the Bancroft's and John Hare’s company. In 1878, Terry joined Henry Irving's company at the Lyceum Theatre as its leading lady, playing Ophelia opposite Irving's Hamlet. Her acting career became increasingly successful with tours of America and ventures into theatre ownership and management. In 1907, Ellen Terry married her third husband, the American actor James Carew (1876–1938) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, whom she first met at the Royal Court and with whom she toured America in George Bernard Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. She graduated successfully to film and continued her career after the First World War on both stage and screen.In later life she continued to act, but also produced plays, lectured and wrote. Terry moved in artistic and literary circles, and her friends included Henry James, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Her great-nephew was the actor, Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000).Born in London in 1837, as Katherine Carr, Kate Gardiner Hastings received her artistic education at the Slade School in London. From 1871 - 1876 she studied with John Poynter and upon the completion of her studies, in 1877, she married Alfred Gardiner Hastings. For the next few years she exhibited regularly showing her work at the Dudley Gallery and the Walker Gallery.The artist drew a series of portraits of Terry’s family circa 1890 which are now part of the National Trust Collection and held at Terry's former home, Smallhythe Place in Kent (NT/SMA/D/20, 21, 22, and 23). These portray Benjamin and Sarah Terry, (the actress’s mother and father) and her children Edith, the theatre director and activist and Edward Gordon Craig, the theatre designer. The pastel of Sarah Terry (1817-1892) was exhibited at the Summer Exhibition of 1890 at New Gallery, London.Another red chalk portrait of the actress as Ophelia in Hamlet c. 1878 by the artist is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (S.1484-2014).

Signed l.r.: W. HUNT, pencil, tiny sketches of figures and a list verso, on wove paper12 x 8.4 cm.; 7 ¼ x 4 ¾ inchesProvenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 370Exhibited: '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).

Signed l.r.: Helleu, black, red and white chalks70 x 48.5 cm; 27 1⁄2 x 19 inchesProvenanceNevill Keating Pictures Ltd., London;Private collection until 2022This elegant drawing aux trois crayons of the artist’s wife Alice, drawn from behind, is recorded in the online archive of Les Amis de Paul-César Helleu as PCH DE1-3216.Helleu studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1876 in the atelier of Jean-Léon Gerome. In Paris, his circle of intimate friends included fellow artists Giovanni Boldini, Alfred Stevens, Edgar Degas, Rodin, Claude Monet and notably the Americans Whistler and Sargent, with whom he briefly shared a studio.Helleu exhibited several large pastel portraits to great acclaim at the Salons of 1885 and 1886, including one of Alice Louis-Guérin, to whom he became engaged in 1885. He and Alice married in 1886 at the church of Saint-Pierre in Neuilly. Although friendly with many of the Impressionist painters and invited by Degas to participate in the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition of 1886, Helleu declined to do so. He exhibited six pastels at the Salon des Pastellistes at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1887, including two further portraits of Alice. At this time he first met Comte Robert de Montesquieu, who was to become his leading patron and who, in 1913, published the first important monograph on the artist.In 1889 Paul and Alice Helleu spent some time with Sargent at Fladbury in England, and he made several studies of Alice and an oil of Paul painting her (Brooklyn Museum, New York). The 1890s were a successful decade for Helleu, who moved comfortably in society in both France and England. He obtained numerous lucrative portrait commissions and enjoyed considerable financial success. Helleu also met and enjoyed a long friendship with Marcel Proust, who is thought to have based the character of the painter Elstir in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu on him.Encouraged by Sargent, Helleu began travelling to America in 1902, where his reputation had preceded him, and he enjoyed further success drawing elegant Society women. His subjects included the Comtesse Greffulhe, Queen Alexandra and Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough. These works were greatly admired by his contemporaries. His preferred subject remained Alice, whom he drew many times.The writer Edmond de Goncourt wrote of Alice Helleu that [s]he was incapable of making a movement that was not graceful and elegant, and ten times a day he [Paul-César Helleu] tried to capture those movements with a quick drypoint sketch.In 1931, four years after Helleu’s death, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris. Today his work can be found in many museum collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Signed with initials and dated l.r.: 10 December 1859 ED, pencil heightened with white on blue paper23.8 x 17.8 cm.; 9 3/8 x 7 inchesProvenanceArnold Fellows;Bequeathed to Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall until sold by a charitable trust, 2023The artist was born in Worcester and trained there and in Birmingham. He specialised in depictions of country life and his drawings of young girls are delightfully and minutely observed.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 his old school. He was the author of The wayfarer's companion: England's history in her buildings and countryside, published by Oxford University Press, 1937.

Signed and dated l.r.: E. Sumner/1899, black chalk25 x 17.5 cm.; 9 7/8 x 6 7/8 inchesProvenancePrivate collection U.K. until 2023The artist of the work was known as Lily, the oldest daughter of the Rev. John Henry Robertson Sumner and his second wife Elizabeth Anne(née Gibson). The family lived at Kelbarrow near Grasmere in the Lake District.A collection of papers relating to the Sumner family are in the possession of the Cumbria Archive Centre. It includes numerous sketchbooksby several members of the Sumner family including several of the Lake District and also of European subjects.Her sister Maggie Sumner (1859–1919) was a correspondence pupil of John Ruskin and his letters contained detailed instructions aimed at improving her drawing. She was the only female artist to contribute to the first five issues of The Yellow Book, the fashionable magazine edited by Aubrey Beardsley. Her work was very detailed and meticulous in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. One of her sketchbooks, depicting landscapes surrounded by floral borders, has an inscription gifting it to her sister Lily for Christmas 1875 and is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (Karen Taylor, British Women Artists 1780- 1890, 2020, no. 18).

Pencil on laid paper, partially watermarked and countermarked 181914.5 x 10.9 cm.; 5 ¾ x 4 ¼ inchesProvenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 369Exhibited: 'Hunt Exhibition Fry Collection', 1967, no. 17 (2)This work dates from c. 1820.

Inscribed in brown ink l.r.: Mrs Paget, pencil on laid paper, recto, with a portrait of a gentleman verso18 x 12.7 cm; 7 x 5 inchesProvenance: By descent in the artist’s family until 2017Henrietta (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 twice l.r.: Mary and M.Perrin, watercolour over traces of pencil with bodycolour and gum arabic, inscribed verso: The Flamingo Fan/by/Miss Mary Perrin,/Fortfield House/Terenure/Co Dublin/From Professor McHardy F.R.C.S./March 1911/Exhibition picture Royal Academy, further inscribed on fragments of original label attached to backboard: Miss Mary P….n/Fortfield House/Terenure Co. Dublin/No:2/The Flamingo Fan/…Dubli/…House/…/ure/DublinCircular, 21 cm diam.; 8 ¼ inches, on artist’s board measuring 22.5 x 22 cm.; 8 ¾ x 8 5/8 inchesFrame size 35.5 x 35.5 cm.; 14 x 14 inchesExhibitedRoyal Academy, London, 1905, no. 929Mary Perrin specialised in intense watercolour portraits of female subjects, often drawing them with elaborate hats or coiffures. She also painted landscapes.Her work is recorded frequently in Irish exhibitions. Perrin exhibited at the Water Colour Society of Ireland (WCSI) which was founded in 1870 as the Amateur Drawing Society by an informal group of six well-connected women from Co. Waterford, Baroness Pauline Prochazca, Miss Harriet Keane, Miss Frances Keane, Miss Henrietta Phipps, Miss Fanny Currey and Miss Fanny Musgrave. Eight years after its founding, the organisation briefly became the "Irish Fine Art Society" before settling to its current name in 1888. It held (and still holds) an Annual Exhibition of the work of its members.Perrin started to exhibit at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in London in 1896 at their galleries at 195 Piccadilly. Perrin also showed regularly at the Royal Academy, the Society of Women Artists and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.Perrin’s work was frequently praised by contemporary critics who remarked on the ‘richness and power’ of her watercolour (Freeman’s Journal, 8 March 1886, in a review of The Irish Fine Art Society exhibition) and she won many prizes at various Irish societies.The backboard labels on this work records her Irish address Fortfield House, Terenure, Co. Dublin. Another work by her has a partial address in London, …s (Hans?) Crescent, London SW., suggesting that she moved between the two cities.Perrin took an active part in the social life of Dublin and is often mentioned in contemporary newspapers as attending charitable and major social events such as the Viceregal Drawing Room in Belfast and costume balls.The artist’s family home, Fortfield House in Dublin, was bought by the Rt. Hon. John Hatchell (1788-1870) in 1858. He was an Irish lawyer and politician and his daughter Penelope married John Perrin. The house remained in the Perrin-Hatchell family until the death of Mary Perrin in 1929. In her will she left her estate to George Hatchell of Tanganyika. The house was demolished in 1834.This work may have belonged to Professor Malcolm McHardy, FRCSE (d.1912) who was Professor of Ophthalmology at King’s College and Ophthalmic Surgeon to King’s College Hospital. He published extensively on ophthalmic surgery.