Sarah Stone A Mandarin Drake

One hundred and forty-four drawings on sixty-eight pages, laid into an album bound in vellum, the fly leaf with a large label inscribed: Miss Stones/First Efforts/plates.71The drawings are of various sizes, on laid paper, each page 31.5 x 19.7 cm.; 12 1⁄4 x 7 3⁄4 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K.;Private sale by Sotheby’s Australia, January 25 2001; Patrick Dockar-Drysdale (1929-2020)ExhibitedTate Britain, 'Now you See Us- Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920', May - October 2024, ill. p.42, p. 205Sarah Stone was the daughter of James Stone, a fan painter and is thought to have assisted her father. The family lived in London.The dated drawings in this album suggest that Stone executed many of them when she was ten or eleven years old and identify her as something of a child prodigy. This album contains many copies from drawing books which were a popular means of allowing an artist to develop their technique by copying. The number of drawings and the repetition of certain subjects reflect a systematic approach and a determination to improve and there are drawings after Holbein, Ribera and Boucher, the minor details may be after Le Brun.One of the drawings is inscribed ‘The New Drawing Book‘ which could be a reference to Francis Vivares, A New Drawing Book, in the Manner of Chalk fit for Youth to Draw after. 6 sepia soft ground etchings, by W. Hebert after Vanloo and Boucher, 4to. Frans. Vivares. Sept. 1759. The plates in this were in the manner of red chalk.The range of subjects in the present album suggests Stone was using one of the compilation drawing books, such as Carrington Bowles, The School of Art; or, most compleat Drawing-Book extant: consisting of an extensive series of well chosen examples, selected from the designs of those eminent masters, Watteau, Boucher, Bouchardson, Le Brun, Eisen, &c. engraved on sixty copper plates, and performed in a method which expresses the manner of handling the chalk, 1765 and later editions.

Signed and dated l.r.: SOPHIA BEALE/1869, watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic34.5 x 60 cm; 13 ¾ x 23 ½ inchesProvenanceBrightwell’s, Leominster, 12 January 2004; where purchased byPaddy Docker-Drysdale (1929-2020);By descent until 2022This 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).

Pastel over traces of pencil, signed in pen and ink on backboard: Anna Tonelli/fece in Londra/1794, inscribed on labels attached to backboard with details of sitters and its provenanceOval, in the original frame25 x 30 cm; 9 ¾ x 11 5/8 inchesProvenanceRichard Curzon-Howe, 1st Earl Howe (1796-1870)Lady de la Zouche, Hagley Hall, Rugeley, Staffordshire (according to a label on reverse of frame);Edward Curzon, 6th Earl Howe of Gopsall Park and Penn House (1906-1984), Buckinghamshire;Thence by family descent until 2023LiteratureN. Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online, J.722.1373The charmingly drawn sitters are the young children of the Hon. Penn Assheton Curzon (1757-1797) and Lady Sophia Charlotte Howe, Baroness Howe of Langar (1762-1835). George Augustus William Curzon (1788-1805) died aged 16 and is buried in Penn, Buckinghamshire where he shares a memorial in the church of the Holy Trinity, Penn, with his parents. His younger sister Marianne (1790-1820) was also buried at Penn.This branch of the Curzon family had houses at Penn House, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and Hagley Hall at Rugeley in Staffordshire, near Cannock Chase.

Signed l.l.: Matilda Hayes, pen and brown ink and watercolour on paper watermarked 1814/WHATMAN21.5 x 27 cm.; 8 ½ x 10 5/8 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, New York, until 2021Matilda Hayes was the daughter of William Hayes (1734-1802), the British illustrator best known for A Natural History of British Birds (1775) and Rare and Curious Birds Accurately Drawn and Colored from Their Specimens in the Menagerie at Osterly Park (1794-99). One of Hayes’ seven children she worked with her father and drew bird illustrations.A self-taught artist, Hayes worked from live specimens he kept in captivity, as well as birds from the collection of one of his patrons, the Duchess of Portland. Like Audubon, Hayes depicted birds at life size whenever possible. He presumably taught his wife Anne and children including Charles, William, Annette, Emily, Maria and Matilda with whom he worked at printing, colouring and assembling volumes, and some of his bird illustrations were drawn by other members of his large family.In the mid-1780s, Hayes moved to Southall, near Osterley Park, and the estate’s owners, Robert and Sarah Child, of the banking family, who collected exotic birds, became his patrons. Horace Walpole described ‘a menagerie full of birds that comes from a thousand islands which Mr. Banks has not yet discovered’ (Walpole to Lady Ossory 21 June, 1773. (Lewis, ed. Walpole’s Correspondence, 1937), 126).Hayes and his family also painted portraits of birds belonging to John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich.The Red-bellied Macaw is a small, green macaw closely associated with the Mauritia palm tree of northern South America. It feeds on the palm's fruits, and nests in a hole in a dead palm surrounded by water.

Signed l.r.: Louisa Seyffarth, watercolour heightened with white and gum arabic and stopping out24.3 x 33.5 cm.; 9 ¾ x 13 ¼ inchesProvenanceThomas Baring (40 Charles Street, Berkely [sic] Square, London)ExhibitedThe Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1841, no. 266 (12 guineas)Louisa Sharpe, the daughter of William Sharpe, an engraver, was the most talented of four sisters, Eliza, Charlotte and Mary Ann, all of whom became artists. Raised in Birmingham, the sisters were encouraged to travel to France and Germany to visit galleries and were taught engraving. In 1816 the family moved to London.Ellen Clayton, the Victorian chronicler of female artists, mentions the present work by name and records its date as 1841 (see E. Clayton, English Female Artists, 1876, Vol. 1 pp. 379-80.)The artist exhibited over thirty miniature portraits at the Royal Academy from 1817. Louisa developed her practise as a watercolourist and made highly finished costume subjects and domestic scenes such as the present work. Many of her drawings were engraved in popular annuals such as The Keepsake and the Forget-Me-Not Annual and Heath’s Book of Beauty. Her work was engraved by Charles Heath, John Henry Robinson and Francis Engleheart. In 1829 she was elected as a member of the Old Water-Colour Society, where she was to exhibit thirty-eight works.Roget notes that her choice of subjects show a ‘taste for dramatic point, and a search for anecdote of a telling kind as well as a picturesque capacity’, extremely long titles and not a little humour (J.L. Roget, History of the Old Water-Colour Society, vol. II, reprint 1972, pp. 42-3).In 1834 Louisa Sharpe married Professor Woldemar Seyffarth and moved to Dresden. The couple had two daughters, one of whom, Agnes, also became an artist. Her work continued to be exhibited in London until her death. Her husband was the King of Saxony’s Commissioner to the Great Exhibition in 1851.Ellen Clayton describes the Sharpe sisters as ‘among the most remarkable figure painters’ and notes that the Duke of York, George III’s second son, was their first patron. She states that they were ‘among the first to originate the modern bold style of water-colour drawing’ (ibid Vol. 1 pp. 379-80).Anna Bronwell Jameson (1794-1860) the British writer, art historian and feminist who visited Dresden in 1830s wrote of Sharpe’s work in the same breath as that of Elizabeth Sirani and Angelica Kauffman and remarked that it was supremely feminine (see Sketches of Art, Literature and Character, Harper and Brothers, 1834, p. 221).Thomas Baring (1799-1873), the first owner of this watercolour was the son of Sir Thomas Baring (1772-1848) and a partner in Baring’s bank from 1828 and until his death in 1873.

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.

Signed l.l.: Louise Rayner, watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic46.5 x 33 cm.; 18 3/8 x 13 inchesThe artist was born in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, the daughter of Samuel and Ann Rayner who were both professional artists. The most talented of six children, who all worked as artists, Louise studied painting from the age of fifteen, first with her father, and subsequently with George Cattermole, Edward Nieman, David Roberts and Frank Stone.She specialised in watercolour and her streetscapes capture the flavour of city life in 1870s and 1880s and are architecturally detailed.In 1851, when Louise was ten, the family moved to London and, except when travelling, she spent much of her life there. She would often accompany her architect brother Richard on his business trips and paint . As a result, Louise was widely travelled, both in Britain and in northern France. She most enjoyed visiting old cathedral cities and market towns, and is acclaimed for her views of Chester, London, Hastings, Tewksbury, Warwick, Edinburgh, Wrexham, Shrewsbury as well as Salisbury.By 1865 she had moved to Chester where she spent many years working and teaching painting. She lodged at the home of Robert Shearing (who owned a chemist's shop in Watergate Street) and his wife Mary Anne at 2 Ash Grove, in what was then a secluded rural location outside the city.In 1910, she and her sister Margaret, who had lodged with her for a time in Chester, moved to Tunbridge Wells. When Margaret died, in 1920, Louise moved for the last time to Southwater Road, St Leonard's-on-Sea, Sussex, and died there on 8th October 1924, aged 92. She never married.For over half a century, Louise was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, the Old and the New Watercolour Societies, the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street Gallery, the British Institution, the Society of Female Artists, the Dudley Gallery, the Birmingham Society of Artists and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.Her work can be found in many public collections including the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, Derby Museum and Art Gallery and the Salisbury Museum.

Signed l.l.: Edith Martineau., watercolour over traces of pencil with scratching out and gum arabic29 x 23.5 cm; 11 3/8 x 9 ¼ inchesThis is a view of Hampstead Heath looking towards Harrow on the Hill.Edith Martineau, together with her sister Gertrude, was one of a small group of female artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelites.The daughter of Dr James Martineau, a Unitarian minister and theologian, the artist was born in Liverpool. After studying at the Liverpool School of Art and Leigh's Academy, she became one of the first women to be admitted to the Royal Academy Schools in 1862, regularly exhibiting there and at the Royal Watercolour Society (where she was elected an associate member in 1862), the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Water-colour Society. Her work was also exhibited at the Palace of Fine Arts in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She died in Hampstead.Martineau worked in watercolour primarily and is known for her delicately painted and meticulous landscapes which owe much to the Pre-Raphaelites, and genre paintings. Examples of her work can be found in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and other institutions.

Signed l.r. Marian/M. Chase 1874, watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of white and gum arabic, in a period sand frame20 x 29.2 cm.; 8 1/8 x 11 1⁄2 inchesChase 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.

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