David Cox, RWS At Dulwich

KT587Signed and dated l.l.: D. Cox/1824, watercolour over pencil22.6 x 28.9 cm.; 8 ¾ x 11 3/8 inchesProvenanceColnaghi (exhibited as ‘In the Wye Valley’);Viscount Eccles (1905-1994);Abbott and Holder; from where acquired byPeter Roberts until 2023ExhibitedProbably the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1824, no. 289, Hay Field – View near HerefordThis charming watercolour is a fine example of the fluent small-scale drawings with which Cox had commercial success in the mid to late 1820s.He wrote to William Radclyffe that he intended to devote more time to saleable smaller works, as his larger pictures were not finding buyers (Scott Wilcox points out that his discovery of the elegant small watercolours by Bonington at this date would have provided a compelling model (See Scott Wilcox, ed., Sun, Wind, and Rain: The Art of David Cox, exhibition catalogue, Yale Centre for British Art, p. 36).The castellated church in in middle distance may well be modelled on St Peter’s, Lugwardine. The building to the right of the church bears a passing resemblance to Sufton Court (which is not so close to the church). Cox was an artist, not a topographer, and frequently modified landscapes and landmarks to suit his artistic vision.Viscount (David) Eccles (1905-1994) had a fine collection of 18th and 19th century British drawings. He was a politician who organised the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. After being sacked by Harold Macmillan in July 1962 he went back into business, first as a director of Courtaulds and later as chairman of West Cumberland Silk Mills.Peter Roberts was a school master and collector of English watercolours who taught English at Oundle School until his retirement in 2007.

Signed and dated l.l.: David Cox. 1836, watercolour over pencil with scratching out18 x 26 cmIn the summer of 1836 Cox spent a few weeks at Rowsley, painting at Haddon Hall. He made several watercolours of elegant figures in seventeenth century costume strolling on the terrace there to which the present work relates. Although the present work does not appear to be of Haddon, it fits in with this period of his oeuvre.

Watercolour over pencil with scratching out18.2 x 22.8 cm.; 7 ¼ x 9 1/8 inchesProvenanceQuentin and Molly Bridge until 2020ExhibitedMartyn Gregory, British Watercolours & Drawings, 2020, no. 8This charming early drawing by Cox dates to circa 1815. A woman and a child can be seen collecting water in a bucket from a stream near a wooden bridge by a cottage. The child appears to be wearing a black Welsh hat.

Signed l.l.: David Cox., watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of pen and black ink on buff paper29.6 x 39 cm; 11 ¾ x 15 ⅜ inchesProvenance: Agnew’s, London, 126th annual exhibition, March 1999, no. 63; The Flannery collection, UK, and by descent until 2018.This very freely drawn watercolour represents a transitional stage in the development of the important theme of ‘Peace and War’, one of David Cox’s major subjects. Two local men, one seated, one standing, watch a small troop of soldiers on the march in an extensive sweeping landscape under a huge sky, with Lancaster Castle in the middle distance and the waters of Morecambe Bay beyond. Unusually for Cox there is not much pencil underdrawing.Cox’s preoccupation with military activity during the very unsettled years of the 1830s and 1840s manifests itself after his 1838 trip with his wife to Seabrook, near Hythe in Kent, for six weeks. The artist made sketching trips along the coast of Kent, including one to Lympne, five miles from Hythe, resulting in Peace and War: Lympne Castle ( c. 1838, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery).The present work, which is similar in style and feel to the Lympne watercolour, presumably dates from the same time, but shows the composition reversed and the distant focus of Lancaster Castle as in Lancaster: Peace and War, 1842 (Art Institute of Chicago). Most of Cox’s numerous ‘Peace and War’ subjects are set at Lancaster rather than Lympne and have more developed references to ‘War’ than the small troop of riders seen here on the top of the hill on the left.The theme is repeatedly treated by Cox at this period, resulting in his 1838 exhibits at the Society of Painters in Water-colours in London, Rocky Scene – Infantry on the March and Stirling Castle – Cavalry on the March and the 1839 Cavalry on the March. In 1848 the first work to be entitled Peace and War (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, National Museums Liverpool) was exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-colours.

Inscribed l.r.: Bruges, watercolour7.6 x 11.4 cm; 3 x 4½ inchesProvenanceSpink & Son Ltd, London, K3/1890b, part of a group purchased from Appleby Brothers, 2 August 1960.This spontaneous, on-the-spot sketch was presumably done when Cox visited Bruges in 1826. His first trip to the Continent was organised by his brother-in-law Mr Gardener, an agent for the sale of government ordnance maps who had premises at 163 Regent Street, London. Gardener persuaded Cox and his son David Cox Jr to accompany him on a business trip to Brussels. The party travelled from Dover to Calais and then, travelling by diligence, on to Dunkerque, Bruges and Brussels. Cox evidently liked the caps worn by the market women in Belgium as he sketched them again in Brussels.1 1.See N. Neil Solly, Memoir of the Life of David Cox, 1873, reprinted 1973, p. 49.

Inscribed with artist’s shorthand and dated 35 c.r., pencil7.2 x 15.1 cm.; 2 ¾ x 5 7/8 inchesProvenanceThe Manning Galleries Ltd., January 1972;Private collection until 2023

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 and dated lower left: J. Severn Roma 1825Oil on canvas61.6 by 75cm., 24 1/4 by 39 1/2 inches, framed size 82 x 90 cm.; 32 1/4 x 35 3/8 inches£22,000This unpublished painting depicts the wife and child of a brigand apparently hiding from the authorities, probably in the Alban Hills. The sleeping man, his rifle at his side, is watched over by his wife who rocks their child in a makeshift cradle covered by a cloth and hanging from a tree branch. Banditti were a popular artistic subject, made fashionable by the work of Salvator Rosa, and Severn experienced an attempted robbery first hand in 1823 when he was travelling around Naples, where brigands were common. Here he focusses on the humanity of the mother and draws attention to the precarious condition of the family.Joseph Severn was the eldest son of a music teacher from Hoxton. At the age of 14 he became apprenticed to the engraver William Bond before entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1815. Here, in 1820, he was awarded the gold medal for historical painting for his Una and the Red Cross Knight in the Cave of Despair, which granted him a travelling scholarship. This coincided with the illness of his friend, the poet John Keats, and together they travelled to Rome in search of a better climate for the ailing poet. During the winter of 1820-21 Severn nursed Keats in their apartment near the Spanish Steps, his detailed letters from the period of great importance, but, on 23 February 1821, Keats died.Severn remained in Rome, launching his own artistic career as a painter of landscapes, portraits and subject paintings. His pictures of Italian peasant life won him such an avid following that there were times during the 1820s when he could not keep up with the flood of commissions. At the beginning of 1827 he wrote to his younger brother Charles that he had “now 9 pictures on order”, and by the beginning of the following year he had “eleven pictures on hand” and this popularity continued well into the 1830s. Patrons, friends, family and fellow artists all praised the freshness and originality of his Italian painting. Sir Charles Eastlake wrote of the “richness of colour” and the "truth of circumstance, situation, incident & costume," of Severn’s Italian work (Charles Eastlake to Severn, 7 May 1834 and May 1832 (MS: Harvard, bMS Eng 1434 [52, 51], quoted in Grant F. Scott, Joseph Severn Letters and Memoirs, 2005, p. 23). It seems probable that the present work was a commission.Severn exhibited extensively at the Royal Academy during the late 1820s and 1830s showing eleven paintings of which ten were Italian genre pictures. Today comparable paintings from this period can be found in the Thorvaldens Museum in Denmark, Italian woman and her Daughter, 1831 and Italian Peasant in The Royal Collection, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The Fountain of 1828 has a similar landscape background to the present work and hangs in the Royal Palace, Brussels. The Vintage, was commissioned by the Duke of Bedford in 1825 for Woburn Abbey. Further work is in the collections of the Tate Gallery, London and the Victoria and Albert Museum.Severn played a crucial role in the foundation of the British Academy of the Fine Arts at Rome (1823-1936), securing funding from various influential patrons including William Hamilton, the antiquarian, and hosting evening gatherings in his apartment on the Via di San Isodoro, where artists met to study and draw from life, and where they had access to casts, painting and sculpting material and books. It was also a temporary rooming house where artists who had recently arrived from England could stay while looking for a studio (see, Grant F. Scott, op. cit., p.17).Severn remained in Rome for most of his life other than a spell in England from 1841-1861. With the help of William Gladstone, an avid patron, he became British Consul in Rome from 1860-72. He died in Rome in 1879 and, at his request, was buried next to Keats in the Protestant cemetery near Porta San Paolo and adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius. Their graves are pictured below.

Henry Lamb (Australian/British 1883 – 1960)Inscribed l.r.: Edwin John, pencilProvenanceThe Estate of the artist;Davis & Langdale Company, New York (DLA 3328);Where purchased by Sarah John (1946 - 2024);Bequeathed to the present ownerThis drawing dates from c. 1913-1915. Edwin John (1905-1978) was the fourth son of Augustus John and Ida and was born in Paris. After a brief career as a middleweight boxer he became a watercolourist. He inherited the estate of his aunt Gwen and did much to secure her posthumous reputation.Henry Lamb was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1883. He studied medicine in Manchester before abandoning it in1905 to train as an artist. At twenty-two he left for London to study under Augustus John and William Orpen at their Chelsea Art School at 72 Flood Street. They held weekly classes in life drawing and painting, still life, figure composition, landscape and decorative painting.He was a talented student and he and John formed a strong friendship. For a while Lamb imitated John’s bohemian manner of dress, wore gold earrings and grew his hair longer. He also began to draw like John. Lamb was a frequent visitor to the John household into 1930s and became close to Dorelia (with whom he had an affair) and to the children who he encouraged to draw.This drawing also has echoes of the work of Stanley Spencer. Spencer (like John) had studied at the Slade from 1908-1912 under Henry Tonks. Lamb and Spencer met in 1913 and were close friends for a while. Another drawing of Edwin from this period was with Piano Nobile in 2024 (Augustus John and the First Crisis of Brilliance, 26 April –13 July 2024, no. 12).

John Stanton Ward, CBE, R.A. (1917 – 2006)Still life with a vase of wildflowersSigned in pencil l.r.: John Ward, watercolour over pencil18.7 x 56 cm.; 7 ¼ x 22 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K., until 2026