English School Mount Hekla, Iceland

Pen and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of white18.9 x 29 cmThere are three drawings (on two sheets) for the eating room at Fairford in the Sir John Soane’s Museum dating from 1789–90 (SM (5) 80/1/65 recto & verso (6) 81/2/99). They aim to remodel the room to make the wall panels more balanced, to use the same cornice as the main stair - case and to remodel the existing chimneypiece.Provenance: Augusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park, Gloucestershire; thence by family descent until 2016

Oil on canvas60 x 50 cm; 23 1/2 x 19 1/2 inchesFrame size 72 x 62 cmMary Anne Fisher, the daughter of Colonel Fisher of Cambridge married Thomas Quintin (1780 - 1852) in June 1801, at St. Mary-The-Great, Cambridge.Thomas’s grandfather was Thomas Quintin (d. 1806), a wealthy London glass manufacturer, who bought the Hatley St George estate in Cambridgeshire in 1785. His eldest son, John Whitby Quintin (d. 1833), inherited the estate.Mary Anne’s husband Thomas was his eldest son.The couple had at least ten children and named their second son William St Quintin. From the late 1830s Thomas appears to have adopted the surname St Quintin although, confusingly, he still appears to have been referred to as Thomas Quintin. A monument to the family in Hatley St George church refers to him as Quintin, but to his son and grandson as St Quintin. Two of their sons followed their father to Cambridge, William St. Quintin to Peterhouse in 1824 and John Whitby II to Emmanuel in 1834. William joined the Bengal Civil Service.Thomas and Mary Ann succeeded to the family estate in Little Gransden, adjoining Hatley St. George. By 1816 the estate consisted of 1,400 acres. In 1841 the parish, excluding the 50 acres of the park, was largely divided between four farms, of which three were held by Thomas St. Quintin's tenants. In 1868 the estate was sold to John Carberry Evans.Mary Ann Fisher St Quintin died on 4 July 1874 at Lathbury, Buckinghamshire and is buried with her husband at St Peter and All Saints Church, Harrold, Bedfordshire.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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