Harry John Johnson Tirol

KT649B Harry John Johnson (1826-1884) Rhodes Stamped with studio stamp l.r. and inscribed: Rhodes, pencil 14 x 21 cm From a collection of watercolours by the artist

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.

Samuel Palmer, RWS (1805-1881) La Vocotella near Corpo di Cava, Italy Pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour with scratching out 26.7 x 37.8 cm.; 10 ½ x 14 7/8 inches Provenance With Agnew’s, London 2002, no. 53 Anonymous sale Sotheby’s, London, 23 November 2006, lot 145; W/S Fine Art, ‘Andrew Wyld: Connoisseur Dealer’, Christie’s, London, 10 July 2012, lot 147; Timothy Clowes, his sale at Sotheby’s, London, 23 September 2021, lot 148; Where bought by a private collector until 2026 Samuel and Hannah Palmer stayed at a small inn at Corpo di Cava on their Italian honeymoon in the summer of 1838. The inn overlooked a Benedictine monastery and a ravine. During this very happy period of his life, Palmer produced some of his finest watercolours, which combined the mysticism of his Shoreham work with more Italianate composition and structure. He told his friend George Richmond that it was here that he felt he was ‘no longer a mere maker of sketches, but an artist’ (E. Malins Samuel Palmer’s Italian Honeymoon, 1968, p. 73). This watercolour is constructed on classical lines with the receding serpentine path with a figure and is infused with the golden glow of Italian sunlight. A similar watercolour of the same place from a different viewpoint is in the collection of the Graves Art Gallery Sheffield (see R. Lister Catalogue Raisonné of the works of Samuel Palmer, 1988, no. 311, pp. 126-7, ill.). In a letter to her parents, written during August 1838, Hannah Palmer mentioned two views of Corpo di Cava by her husband. Presumably one is the Graves Art Gallery drawing and the present work may be the second which Raymond Lister records as untraced (R. Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge 1988, see no. 310).

Watercolour, with a pencil sketch of a house in a landscape verso, on laid paper 11.2 x 13 cm Provenance: William Arnold Sandby; John Manning, London; Private collection, UK until 2017 William Arnold Sandby (c. 1828-1904) was the great-grandson of Thomas Sandby, author of the first book about the artists, Thomas and Paul Sandby-Royal Academicians, 1892, and the historian of the Royal Academy (two volumes of its history published in 1862). He had a large collection of the work of his forebears, helped organise their first exhibition at Nottingham Castle Museum in 1884 and bequeathed many of their works to museum collections.

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).

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.

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.

Corner of the Band of the Tank, Tapawewa, Polanarua (Polonnaruwa), looking to the Matele hills Signed, inscribed and dated l.l.: Corner of the Band of the Tank (Tapawewa)/(Polanarua)/looking to the Matele hills./Kandy/Sept 19th 73./CFGC/117, watercolour and pencil 15.7 x 50.5 cm.; 6 ¼ x 19 ¾ inches Polonnaruwa is in North Central Sri Lanka.

Vaulted Hall under the Terrace, Heidelberg, Germany Inscribed and dated l.l.: Vaulted Hall under the Terrace. Heidelberg/Sep 21st/1865, watercolour over pencil with bodycolour on blue paper 17.2 x 25.5 cm.; 6 ¾ x 10 inches Heidelberg Castle is one of the most important Renaissance buildings in Northern Europe. The residence of the Counts Palatine of the Rhine dates back to 1225 and was largely rebuilt in the sixteenth century. It was badly damaged by the French army in the course of the War of the Grand Alliance, or the Nine Year’s War (1688 - 1697), and was finally ruined by two devastating lightening strikes in 1764.

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.