Birds & Animals

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 inchesProvenanceSotheby’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 2017ExhibitedAnthony 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.

Signed l.r.: S Bowdich del and inscribed l.c.: A2. Carp. /2 natl. size, pen and grey ink watercolour heightened with gold27.7 x 35 cm.; 10 7/8 x 13 ¾ inchesLiteratureThe Freshwater Fishes of Great Britain, ‘Drawn and Described by Mrs. T. Edward Bowdich’ London, 1828, plate IISarah 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’.

Oil on paper laid down on canvas15.1 x 21.6 cm.; 6 x 8 ½ inchesFrame size 25.5 x 32 cm.; 10 x 12 ½ inchesEngravedBy the artist as a lithograph on chine collé, printed by Charles Motte, 1828, plate 8Newton 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.

Watercolour17.5 by 25.5 cmTwo 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 2016The 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.

Pen and brown ink and wash over traces of pencil on laid paper12 x 9.7 cm.; 4 ¾ x 3 3/4 inchesFramed in a dark wood moulding31 x 29 cm.; 12 1/4 x 11 1/2 inchesProvenance: Dickinson

Two, each signed l.l.and l.r., each inscribed l.c.: F. Concolr./life and F. Ocelot.of.Albany./Life, watercolour over pencilEach approx. 25 x 17.5 cm.; 9 ¾ x 6 7/8 inchesThe 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.

Pencil9 x 15 cm.; 3 ½ x 6 inchesProvenanceThe 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 l.c.: E. Lear, pencil with watercolour, pen and black ink and touches of gold17.7 x 23 cm.; 7 x 9 inchesThese 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 watercolour23 x 17.7 cm.; 9 x 7 inchesThese 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 gold23 x 17.7 cm.; 9 x 7 inchesProvenance (for all the bird drawings)Sir Edward Strachey, Bt., (1812-1901) and by descent to the previous ownersThe drawings are available individually or as a groupThese 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, gum arabic and pen and black ink17.7 x 23 cm.; 7 x 9 inchesThese 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 with initials l.r.: HSM, watercolour over traces of pencil on buff paper heightened with white24 x 9 cm.; 5 ¾ x 3 ¾ inchesFrame size 27 x 18.5 cm.; 9½ x 7 ½ inchesProvenanceThe Fine Art SocietyMarks’ earlier works were usually historical and literary, especially Shakespearian and sometimes humorous. However, he became increasingly interested in painting birds and this body of work was highly praised by John Ruskin. Marks had three exhibitions in six years at the Fine Art Society in London, the first of which was Birds in Bond Street in 1889. He was a frequent visitor to London Zoo where he was frequently approached by other curious visitors . He wrote in his preface to the 1890 catalogue: “The most common remark I hear is, “Ah pretty creature! Don’t he seem to know he’s sitting for his picture?” and concluded “… I hope I may be excused, and not held too eccentric, in preferring to converse with a parrot for one hour, rather than with a politician for two”. The Victoria and Albert Museum have a holding of his work.The artist was born in London, the fourth child of John Isaac Marks, a solicitor. He studied in London at the Royal Academy Schools and later in Paris. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere from 1853. He was elected ARA in 1870 and became a full RA in 1878.

Peter Paillou (c. 1720-1790)A pair of snipe and a kingfisher in a landscapeWatercolour over pencil on wove paper35.2 x 44 cm.; 13 ¾ x 17 ¼ inchesProvenanceSotheby’s London, 9 November 1995, lot 19; where bought by James Hall, his collection, no. 70 until 2022The artist’s life is not well documented, but he is believed to have come to Britain from France in the first half of 18th century. London based, he worked for the famous Welsh naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), drawing birds. His son, Peter Paillou Jr. was a miniature and portrait painter.

Signed and dated l.r.: S:Stone 1788, inscribed in pen and brown ink verso: Sam: Lysons., watercolour with gum arabic and touches of bodycolour on wove paper37 x 30 cm.; 14 1⁄2 x 11 3⁄4 inchesProvenanceProbably Samuel Lysons, FSA (1763-1819);Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven (1900-1973);By family descent;Sotheby’s, London, sale of the Library of Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven, Part II, 29 November 2022, lot 478Sarah Stone was the first female British painter of birds and animals to achieve professional recognition. Her drawings of birds are a highly important visual record of the specimens held in collections in late eighteenth-century England, and include some of specimens collected on the voyages of Captain Cook.The Mandarin drake from China (Aix galericulata) is shown raising the fan-shaped, cinnamon coloured innermost pair of secondary wings on his back like sails in a courting gesture. Stone evidently admired the Mandarin duck as she made several versions of the present drawing. One is in the Natural History Museum, London (see Christine Jackson, Sarah Stone Natural Curiosities from the New Worlds, 1998, p. 113, NHML no. 54, ill. Pl. 54 p. 81). Another, smaller version dated 1781 (in poor condition) was sold at Bonhams, London, 12 October 2022, lot 3.Stone was employed when she was still in her mid-teens to draw the objects in the Holophusican or Leverian Museum, a major cultural institution of the day housed in the former royal palace of Leicester House. She was to work there for nearly thirty years. Its owner, Sir Ashton Lever (1729-1788) commissioned her by 1777 to record specimens and ethnographic material brought back by British expeditions to Australia, the Americas, Africa and the Far East.For financial reasons, Lever had to dispose of his collection in the 1780s, by lottery. Before doing so, he apparently commissioned Sarah Stone to depict the birds, ethnography and antiquities. From January to March 1784 Lever exhibited Stone’s work, advertising the show as:‘a large Room of Transparent Drawings from the most curious specimens in the collection, consisting of above one thousand different articles, executed by Miss Stone, a young lady who is allowed by all Artists to have succeeded in the effort beyond imagination. These will continue to be open for the inspection of the public until they are removed into the country. Admittance HALF-A-CROWN each...Good fires in all the galleries.’ (See C. Jackson, ibid, p. 22).Lever kept Stone’s drawings after the exhibition. The Leverian Museum continued to grow under new ownership through the 1780s and 1790s, and Stone continued to work there.Stone drew items from other private collections and the British Museum. As most of the actual specimens have not survived, her drawings are a vital record of contemporary collections, few of which produced catalogues, and give valuable insight into the collecting practises of Enlightenment museums.Sarah’s father James Stone was a fan painter, and it is likely that Sarah assisted him. As a child she was taught to make her own pigments using natural ingredients. She practised working in bodycolour as well as watercolour as a child, and the exquisite brushwork which can be seen in the drawing of the feathers of the duck demonstrates her skill at using bodycolour and gum arabic to intensify the colours.Stone exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in 1781, 1785 and 1786. She exhibited paintings of birds at the Society of Artists in 1791. She married John Langdale Smith, a midshipman, on 8 September 1789; she exhibited as a ‘painter’ before her marriage and in her married name as an ‘Honorary Exhibitor.’ She painted less after her marriage, predominately drawing live birds which her husband, also an artist, brought back from his travels.Stone was twenty seven when she married. A, daughter Eliza, who probably died in infancy, was baptised in September 1792 at St John the Evangelist, Westminster. A son, Henry Stone Smith (1795-1881) was baptised in the same church in March 1795. The family has a note by him recording a bird ‘Topial’, probably a troupial, which was brought back from the West Indies by his father and lived with the family (see C. Jackson, ibid, p. 30).Further examples of Stone’s watercolours can be found in the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, London, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales, the Yale Center for British Art, the Getty, the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii and the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand.Paris Spies-Gans has written about Stone’s participation in the imperial project in Paul Mellon Centre Notes, No. 20, ‘Colonialism in the Photographic Archive’, January 2022, pp. 11-12).Samuel Lysons, FSA (1763-1819)The inscription on the reverse of the drawing suggests it was owned by Samuel Lysons, FSA. Lysons was a Gloucestershire antiquarian, engraver and archaeologist, whose interests centred on Roman archaeology and mosaics and Gloucestershire church architecture. He was the Director of the Society of Antiquaries from 1798 to 1809. He illustrated his brother Daniel Lysons’ Environs of London, and the two collaborated on Magna Britannia, Being a Concise Topographical Account of the Several Counties of Great Britain, published in several volumes from 1806 to 1822.Henry Rogers Broughton (1900-1973)Henry Rogers Broughton succeeded his older brother Urban Huttlestone Broughton as the 2nd Lord Fairhaven in 1966. He was born in the United States and educated at Harrow, before joining the Royal Horse Guards in 1920. Their father, English emigré Urban Broughton (1857-1929), had a successful career building sewerage systems in the USA in the 1890s and married Carla Leland Rogers (1867-1939). She was the daughter of the wealthy oil and railroad tycoon Henry Huttlestone Rogers (184-1909). In 1912 the family moved to London. The title Lord Fairhaven was awarded to Urban for his political activities, but he died before he could use it and his eldest son Huttlestone became the first Baron Fairhaven.Both brothers were great collectors and Henry put together one of the largest twentieth-century collections of depictions of natural history. He left a large bequest of one hundred and twenty flower paintings, over nine hundred watercolours and drawings and forty-four volumes of drawings by botanical artists such as Redouté and Ehret to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (the Broughton Bequest). The brothers’ home, Angelsey Abbey near Cambridge, with its large natural history collection, was left to the National Trust in 1966.

Signed l.r.: CF Tunnicliffe, watercolour over pencil with touches of white on cream paper41 x 55 cm.; 16 1/8 x 21 5/8 inchesProvenanceThe Tryon Gallery;Private collection, UK, sold atChristies South Kensington, London, 3 November 2010, lot 58The artist was a countryman who was brought up Cheshire. After studying at the Macclesfield School of Art he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London, gaining his teaching diploma and a further scholarship to study in the RCA's new Etching and Engraving School.He worked as a commercial artist and taught art at Manchester Grammar School.Tunnicliffe was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and in 1974 a ‘Members Exhibition’ was held there of his work.He and his wife Winifred moved from Cheshire to Angelsey in 1947 and lived at Shorelands in Malltraeth until his death.

Watercolour over traces of pencil heightened with gum arabic and white, with framing instructions in pencil, verso, inscribed with title on original label attached to backboard31.6 x 41.4 cm.; 12 ½ x 16 ¼ inchesSee The Nursery for the artist’s biography. Both drawings have a painted marble ledge on which the birds are arranged, a compositional device favoured by the artist and used in Dutch still lifes. The combination of birds and flowers in an elaborate arrangement in this and The Nursery were subjects which Withers favoured in 1840s and a departure from her botanical work. The embossed and moulded milk glass of the vase and urn were popular in the early 19th century and have been beautifully rendered by Withers.The introduction of a window, here delicately drawn with a cracked pane and bubble in the glass, looks back to the Old Masters. The landscape beyond suggests a freedom not enjoyed by the captive birds and is a reminder of the interior world inhabited by women of the mid-Nineteenth century.Withers forms part of a distingished cohort of female artists who drew natural history subjects in inventive and diverse ways. Predecessors such as Rachel Ruysch (1664 - 1750) or Barbara Dietzsch (1706 - 1783) had similarly scientific approaches to their subjects and her work merits consideration in this broader context (see Catherine Powell-Warren, Making her Mark, A History of Women Artists in Europe 1400-1800, 2023, ‘Scientific and Natural Illustration’, p. 225-228).

Signed and inscribed on pink ribbon: Mrs Withers 26 Grove Place. Delt., watercolour with gum arabic12 x 23.9 cm; 4 3⁄4 x 9 3⁄8 inchesProvenance: Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven (1800– 1973)Augusta Innes Withers, the daughter of a Chaplain to the Prince Regent, was born in Cheltenham. She was well known to contemporaries and widely praised for her botanical and bird pictures, characterised by her meticulously detailed and accurate work which is beautifully exemplified in the present drawing. Withers exhibited widely, at the Royal Academy in London from 1829 to 1846, the Royal Society of British Artists where she showed sixty-eight works between 1832–65 and the New Society of Painters in Water Colours. She was one of the earliest members of the Society of Women Artists where she exhibited forty-three works from 1857–75.Withers was appointed flower painter to Queen Adelaide in 1833, flower and fruit painter to Queen Victoria in 1864 and is listed as a painter to the Horticultural Society.In 1822 she married Theodore Withers (1782–1869), an accountant from Middlesex. The couple lived mainly in London and had at least two children, Theodore (b. 1823) and Augusta (b. 1825).Withers contributed to a large number of publications including The Botanist, John Lindley’s Pomonological Magazine and Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. She illustrated Robert Thompson’s The Gardener’s Assistant, 1859 and collaborated with Sarah Drake on James Bateman’s Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala.Three of Withers’ works are in the Natural History Museum, London, and a large number of her original watercolours are held in the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society.Henry Rogers Broughton succeeded his older brother Urban Huttlestone Broughton as the 2nd Lord Fairhaven in 1966. He was born in the United States and educated at Harrow, before joining the Royal Horse Guards in 1920.Both brothers were great collectors and Henry put together one of the largest twentieth century collections of paintings, drawings, gouaches and miniatures. He left a large bequest of one hundred and twenty ower paintings, over nine hundred watercolours and drawings and forty- four volumes of drawings by botanical artists such as Redouté and Ehret to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in the Broughton Bequest.