Henry Pilleau The Dead Sea

Pen and grey ink and watercolour and pencil27.4 x 43.1 cm.; 10 3⁄4 x 17 inchesProvenanceChristie’s, London, 21 November 2002, lot 20; where bought by the previous owner;Private collection, U.K., until 2022The present work is a significant example of Rowlandson’s landscape draughtsmanship. It probably dates from the same time as a smaller view of Glastonbury showing the abbey from the main street and marketplace of the town in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (Dyce Collection) which was etched by the artist as plate 24 of Rowlandson's World in Miniature, No. 2, 1816. Rowlandson has used a certain amount of artistic license in his interpretation of the topography.

Laura Knight, DBE, RA, RWS (1877-1970)Anna Pavlova rehearsing The Bacchanal, c. 1910-1911Signed l.l.: Laura Knight, oil on canvas45.5 x 41 cm.; 17 5/8 x 16 1/8 inchesProvenancePeter and Vera Chadwick, 1977 (according to an inscription onthe previous frame);Harry Greatorex, 1988;His sale at Sotheby’s, unidentified sale 1988(?), lot 73;Private collection U.K. until 2025Knight captures the grace, elegance and kinetic energy of the most famous ballerina of her day on stage performing her most dynamic and erotic role.Pavlova (1881 – 1931) visited London with Sergei Diaghilev's company for the first time in the summer of 1910. She caused a sensation with her dramatic Dance Bacchanal from Pepita's ballet The Seasons, choreographed by Mikhail Fokine, which was to become one of her signature roles. An erotic duet, performed with Mikhail Mordkin saw the dancers throwing garlands and striking sensual poses with theatrical abandon, wearing Greek tunics.Knight was mesmerised by the Ballets Russes when they performed in London during the years before the First World War. In particular, she became enamoured with the dancer Anna Pavlova. In her autobiography, 1965, Knight wrote: ‘The whole look of Pavlova had perfection of finish … But whatever the beauty of form may have been, she possessed an attraction all her own ... a something not of this world.’ (L. Knight, The Magic of a Line, p. 161). In 1911 she made sketches of Pavlova at the Palace Theatre, continuing her interest in the figure in motion. Pavlova often invited Knight to her home, The Ivy House in Golders Green next to Hampstead Heath, which she bought in 1912, so she could sketch her. Knight drew Pavlova’s portrait many times as well as sketching her backstage and made small enamel pieces recording her dancing. Her work helped cement the dancer’s reputation in Britain and beyond.Pavlova settled in London after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Pen and brown and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil, bears inscription and date22 x 36 cm.’ 8 ½ x 14 1/8 inchesProvenanceMaurice Dear, Southampton;Private collection, U.K., until 2025Rowlandson drew boating scenes such as this one on many occasions, this work probably dates from c. 1810-1820. The river is teeming with a variety of craft and passengers and the nearby pub doing a roaring trade.

Pen and black ink over pencilEach 13 x 21 cm.; 5 x 8 ½ inchesProvenanceJ.M. Hunter, purchased from The Fine Art Society 22 November 1968 until 2023ExhibitedThe Fine Art Society Ltd., London, 'Edward Bawden, CBE, RA - Recent works', 1968LiteratureClaudia Roden, 'A Book of Middle Eastern Food', published by Thomas Nelson, London, 1968, with photographs by Pinkard, and black and white illustrations at the head of each chapter by Edward Bawden.These are the original drawings used to illustrated Claudia Roden’s (b. 1936) first cookery book on Middle Eastern food which mixed Bawden’s playful drawings with modern food photography and revolutionised Western attitudes to the cuisines of the Middle East and North Africa. It was substantially expanded and published in a new edition in 1986. She is the author of ten popular and critically-acclaimed cookery books and has a particular interest in the social and historical background of cooking.Bawden lived in Great Bardfield in Essex from the 1930s to 1970 and was a central figure of the Great Bardfield Artists.

Inscribed and dated l.l.: Ponte Nomentano. June 21st. Rome, watercolour over pencil, stamped with Michael Ingram’s collector’s mark on old mount12.5 x 17.5 cm.; 4 7/8 x 6 7/8 inches, framed size 27 x 32 cm.; 10 1/2 x 12 1/2 inchesProvenanceBought in Bath by Michael Ingram, his sale at Sotheby’s 8 December 2005, lot 236, where bought for a princely collection in the Middle East until December 2024Roberts visited Rome and Naples in 1853. He greatly enjoyed Rome and produced many drawings and oil paintings as a result of his stay.The bridge was erected at the point where the via Nomentana crossed the Aniene river, a tributary of the Tiber, at the foot of Monte Sacro. Roberts drew the large travertine arch and the medieval crenelated fortification. Restored several times over the centuries, it was much painted by visiting artists.Michael Ingram inherited his passion for collecting drawings from his uncle Sir Bruce Ingram, OBE, MC (1877-1963, L. 1405a) and modelled his collector’s mark on that of his uncle.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Carl Haag London 14 Sept 1849, oil on paper35 x 25.3 cm.; 13 ½ x 10 inches, framed size 50 x 40 cm.; 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 inchesProvenancePeter Ward-Jackson (1916-2015)LiteratureW. Karbach and C. Allison, Carl Haag Victorian Court Painter and Travelling Adventurer between Orient and Occident, 2019, no. 85Having studied in Munich (where he worked as a miniaturist and book illustrator), Paris and Brussels the artist arrived in England in the spring of 1847. After spending that winter in Rome, he returned to London to study watercolour painting at the Royal Academy Schools. He almost lost a hand in an accidental explosion in December 1848. Haag’s first exhibited work at the Royal Academy in 1849 was entitled The Return from the Vineyards and the present work may have been made as a preparatory study.He became a member of the Old Water Colour Society in 1853. Haag travelled widely all over Europe and the Near East. He was popular with Royal and aristocratic patrons and spent the autumn of 1853 at Balmoral and the winter at Windsor.Peter Ward-Jackson was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum and a leading authority on furniture, prints and drawings, particularly ornament designs. His publications became standard works in these fields such as his catalogue of the V&A’s Italian Drawings (in two volumes, 1979-80).

Pencil and black and red chalk, in original frame42 x 34.5 cm.; 16 ½ x 13 5/8 inchesProvenance: With Dorothy Roberts, Lincoln, 1996;Acquired by the previous owner in May 1996 from Douglas Turner;Private collection U.K. until 2021Literature: Kenneth Garlick, ‘A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Pastels of Sir Thomas Lawrence’ in The Walpole Society; 1962–64, xxxix, 1964, p. 244This unpublished drawing by Lawrence is an addition to a group of three known portraits of Munia.Lawrence became friendly with the Angerstein family in about 1790, when John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823) took charge of his financial affairs. Lawrence did paintings and drawings of most of the family, which included John Julius’ son, John Angerstein, M.P. (1772/3–1858), who married, in 1799, Amelia Lock, daughter of William Lock, who was also a friend and patron of Lawrence. Isabel Smith, or Munia, was nurse to the couple’s five children at Woodlands, the family residence which John Julius had built at Blackheath in 1770s. She was described as Russian in the papers of Miss May Rowley, a direct descendant of Elizabeth Julia Angerstein, daughter of John Julius. (Archive reference number NG14/230/1).This smaller version of this composition (measuring 35.5 x 30.25 cm; 14 x 11 15/16 inches) from May Rowley is now in the collection of Tate (T00768). The Tate drawing is inscribed on the back ‘This is a drawing of my Nurse Isabel Smith, called Munia, buried at Nh Willingham Lincolne. Wm Angerstein, drawn by Sr Thos Lawrence at Woodlands’. The Tate drawing originally belonged to Elizabeth, John Angerstein’s daughter, and was bequeathed to the nation in 1965 by May Rowley, who had inherited it from her grandfather Richard Freeman Rowley, Elizabeth’s husband.A second version, the same larger size as the present drawing, is in the possession of Viscount Daventry at Arbury, and was exhibited at Bristol City Art Gallery, ‘Exhibition of works by Sir Thomas Lawrence P.R.A.’, 1951, no. 48.Garlick records a further smaller version of this subject measuring 35.6 x 30.2 cm as being in the possession of Miss Keightley in 1925. She inherited the drawing from her father Archibald Keightley who was Lawrence’s executor. This drawing, in poor condition, is now in the Royal Academy (LAW/3/1). This work was illustrated in R.Brimley Johnson, Mrs Delaney, 1925, rep. facing p. 256 (incorrectly called Mrs Delaney).The financier and philanthropist John Julius Angerstein was born in St Petersburg in 1735 to a German family who had settled in Russia. He emigrated to England in about 1749 and built a fortune, partly from a career in the City of London, developing Lloyd’s insurance business. An active philanthropist, he was a patron of Lawrence’s and the artist advised him on his picture acquisitions together with Benjamin West. Angerstein started collecting around 1790.On Angerstein’s death the British Government purchased thirty-eight of his pictures and took over the lease of his Pall Mall town house. The public was able to view the collection here before the National Gallery, founded in 1824, was constructed in Trafalgar Square and it formed the nucleus of the gallery’s collection. Four paintings from the Pall Mall house were not purchased, a Reynolds portrait of Angerstein’s first wife and their first child, and three Fuseli paintings after Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’which were returned to Angerstein’s heirs, and which remained at Woodlands until 1870.For further information about Woodlands and the collection kept there see Susanna Avery-Quash, ‘The lover of the fine arts is well amused with the choice pictures that adorn the house’: John Julius Angerstein’s ‘other’ art collection at his suburban villa, Woodlandshttps://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/33/3/fhx055/4773890 (Journal of the History of Collections, Volume 33, Issue 3, November 2021, fhx055, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhx055See also Anthony Twist, A Life of John Julius Angerstein, 1735–1823: Widening circles of finance, philanthropy, and the arts in eighteenth-century London (London, 2006).

KT488Signed and inscribed on the old backing board attached to reverse: View of Shipton on Charwell [sic]-Evening.\W. Turner./Oxfd., watercolour over traces of pencil25.6 x 41 cm.; 10 x 16 inchesProvenanceW/S Fine Art Ltd., ‘Watercolours and Drawings’, June 2005, no. 47;Private collection U.K. until 2021This view shows the manor house and part of the estate of the artist’s uncle, William Turner, and the church of Holy Cross, amongst the trees to the right of the house. The artist built the church, in fourteenth -century style, at the expense of his uncle. It is thus an intensely personal work in which the artist depicts his home and the only building he designed.William Turner Senior had supported the artistic training of his nephew after his father died. In 1804 he bought the estate of Shipton-on-Cherwell with its manor house and park, as seen in the present watercolour. In 1809 the young artist recorded his address as Shipton (Martin Hardie, ‘William Turner of Oxford’, The Old Water-Colour Society’s Club, IX, 1932, p. 2).Turner first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807 and in January 1808 he became the youngest associate of the Society of Painters in Water Colours and was elected a full member in November of that year.The church, which seems to be Turner of Oxford’s only architectural work, dates from 1831. The artist was buried there at his death in 1862 and in 1896 a screen was erected in his memory.Some of the artist’s most celebrated watercolours are of water lilies on the River Cherwell, and from 1835 he sent a number to the exhibitions at the Society of Painters in Water Colours. The earliest of these, now in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art (B1981.24), shows the church at Shipton-on-Cherwell in the trees in the distance, a focal point of the composition.

Signed l.l.: W Muller/1839., oil on panel43.5 x 27 cm.; 17 x 10 5/8 inchesProvenanceThomas Agnew & Sons, London;Anonymous sale Sotheby’s, London, 10 November 1982, lot 49;Noortman & Brod, New York, 1983;Anonymous sale, Christie’s, New York, 10 February 1998 lot 160;Matthew Rutenberg, New York, until 2020ExhibitedNoortman & Brod, 18th and 19th Century Paintings, April – May 1983, New York, June - July 1983, LondonThis spirited painting executed with great bravura was done shortly after the artist’s return from Egypt in 1839. Müller arrived in Egypt by steamer in November 1838. He was one of the first established European artists to visit Egypt and was there at the same time as David Roberts, although neither knew of the other’s presence there.Müller was exhilarated by his arrival in the bustling metropolis of Cairo and was particularly intrigued by the slave market, which he described as ‘one of my most favourite haunts’ (W. J. Müller, ‘An Artist’s Tour of Egypt’, Art-Union 1, London, 1839, pp. 131-2).Müller is the best-known artist of the Bristol School. His German father settled in the city and was the first curator of the Bristol Institution, the forerunner of the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. His early exposure to art led to a short apprenticeship with James Baker Pyne and a friendship with the Reverend James Bulwer (1749-1879), a pupil of John Sell Cotman, whose collection of Norwich School drawings Müller would have known.In 1833 Müller was one of the founders of the Bristol Sketching Club and his travels began the following year with visits to Holland, Germany and Venice. His 1838 trip started in Athens before he continued to Cairo. In 1840 he visited France and in 1843 he went to Lycia at the same time as Sir Charles Fellows’ expedition, during which he produced some of his finest watercolours. He died at the age of 43 after his return from Turkey.Following Müller’s death, prices of his oil paintings rose dramatically in the salerooms. Articles on his work appeared regularly and in 1875 N. Neal Solly, the biographer of David Cox, wrote a long biography. In 1896 the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery held a retrospective of 192 of Müller’s paintings, watercolour and drawings. His reputation was kept alive in Bristol where the 150th anniversary of his birth in 1962 was celebrated with an exhibition at Bristol Art Gallery, while in 1984 Tate Gallery held a show of his French and Lycian watercolours. In 1991 a major retrospective was held at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, who hold the most comprehensive collection of his work, organised by Francis Greenacre, the renowed authority on Müller and the Bristol School.

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).