Newton Smith Limbird Fielding A bear leaning against a rock by a river

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.

Stamped with the artist’s stamp l.l., watercolour over pencil heighted with white on rough buff paper32.3 x 46.5 cm; 12 5/8 x 18 ¼ incheProvenance: 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 2020Exhibited: Glasgow International Exhibition, 1888Literature: Delia Millar, 'The Victorian Watercolours in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen', 2 vols., London, 1995, no. 3422Osborne 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 paper32.3 x 46.5 cm; 12 5/8 x 18 ¼ incheProvenance: 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 2020Exhibited: Glasgow International Exhibition, 1888Literature: Delia Millar, 'The Victorian Watercolours in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen', 2 vols., London, 1995, no. 3422

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 inchesProvenanceArthur 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 2024LiteratureT. Girtin and D. Loshak, The Art of Thomas Girtin, 1954, no. 416, p. 191;G. Smith, Thomas Girtin (1775-1802): An Online CatalogueArchive and Introduction to the Artist, TG1761ExhibitedNew Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Prospects, 1950, no. 18., pl. 9b;Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, London, British Drawings and Watercolours, 2015, no. 17This 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.

Watercolour, with a pencil sketch of a house in a landscape verso, on laid paper11.2 x 13 cmProvenance: William Arnold Sandby; John Manning, London; Private collection, UK until 2017William 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.

Oil on paper laid down on board, inscribed on reverse of board: George Mason ARA and stamped with a Christie’s stencil21 x 21 cm.; 8 ¼ x 8 ¼ inchesProvenanceThe artist’s studio sale, Christie’s, 15 February 1873, lot 91, where bought byGeorge Dunlop Leslie, RA (1835-1921); his daughter Lydia Leslie, By descent to T. L. Twidell ExhibitedStoke-on-Trent Museum & Art Gallery, George Heming Mason, 1982, cat. no 20 (ill) (lent by T.W. Twidell). ExhibitedGeorge Heming Mason, City Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, 1 May – 12 June 1982; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 26 June – 31 July, The Fine Art Society, London 9 August – 4 September, cat. 20 (ill.)The sympathetic white horse is yoked in the Italian manner in this lively oil sketch and can be presumed to have been executed in Italy.

Inscribed on original label now attached to backboard: General Distant View of the Carnarvonshire Mountains, seen from the road beyond Llangerniew,/going by the Vale of the Elwyn from St Asaph to Llanrwst-Principal in this Towering Group, are Moel Siabod, Snowdon, The Glyders/ and Trevaon Denbighshire, watercolour over pencil.13 x 20.8 cm.; 5 1/8 x 8 ¼ inchesProvenanceGeorge Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick (1746-1816), no. 17, part of an album sold at Sotheby’s, 17 June 1936;With Leger Galleries, 1980; Christie’s, London, 20 November 1984, lot 113, where bought by a private collector, until 2024Smith seems to have been fascinated by the Welsh countryside and dated drawings, often inscribed ‘taken on the spot’, point to visits nearly every year from 1784-1798, after his return from Italy.The artist was born in Cumberland and patronised by 2nd Earl of Warwick who sponsored his travels to Italy in 1776 and whose name became the artist’s sobriquet. Smith spent five years in Rome and Naples, befriending William Pars and Thomas Jones, in whose Memoirs he is frequently referenced. He travelled home in 1781 through Switzerland with Francis Towne and was among the most admired watercolourists of his day.

Charles Gore (1729-1807)A view of the East front of Arundel Castle, West Sussex, seen from the Bowling GreenInscribed 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/1781Watercolour over touches of pencil on laid paper, with a Whatman watermark19.6 by 49 cm., 7 ¾ by 19 ¼ inchesProvenanceIolo Williams (1890-1962); And by descent until sold Sotheby's, London, 13 July 1989, lot 5; Private collection;With Guy Peppiatt Fine ArtThe 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.

Henry Pilleau (1813-1899)The Dead SeaSigned with monogram l.l., watercolour 21 x 38 cm.; 8 ¼ x 15 inchesProvenancePresented to Queen Victoria in 1887 for her Golden Jubilee by the Royal Society of Water-Colour PaintersPilleau served with 16th Lancers. He is best known for his colourful watercolours and prints of Egypt. He visited Egypt in 1840s with Lieutenant -Colonel Sir George Everest (1790-1866), Surveyor-General of India, presumably on the men’s way to India. Pilleau’s ‘Sketches in Egypt’ comprising 12 lithographs was published in London in 1845 by Dickinson and dedicated to Everest. It comprises text and colourful plates of famous views and sites. Everest, a Welsh surveyor and geographer, after whom Mount Everest was named, served as the Surveyor General of India (1830–1843) and worked on the Great Trigonometric Survey of India.This watercolour left the Royal collection in the early twentieth century together with a substantial number of other works on paper, and there is no documentation for this with the Royal Collection. The other works whose details are recorded on the sheet of Windsor notepaper attached to the backboard were also dispersed at this time ( from the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art gift, Llyn Crafnant by D.W. Barker (the rendering of his name as ‘Banken’ suggests that someone was inaccurately copying from another source); Time-Honoured Lancaster by R. Aspinwall; and A Breezy Day by R. Short).

Sir Gerald Festus Kelly, P.R.A. (British 1879-1972)The Great Wall of ChinaOil on boardExhibitedMartyn Gregory Gallery, ‘Modern British Painters’, October 1988, Catalogue no. 52, no. 34This 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.

Samuel Palmer, RWS (1805-1881)La Vocotella near Corpo di Cava, ItalyPencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour with scratching out 26.7 x 37.8 cm.; 10 ½ x 14 7/8 inchesProvenanceWith Agnew’s, London 2002, no. 53Anonymous 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 2026Samuel 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).