George Heming Mason The White Horse

Pen and grey ink and grey wash over pencil 24.5 x 17.1 cm.; 10 x 6 ¾ inches Provenance With the Squire Gallery; J. Thursby-Pelham; Mrs Guy Argles and by descent until 1995, anon. sale Christie’s, London, 7 November 1995, lot 71; Spink, London; Christie’s, London, 21 November 2002, lot 8, where bought by the previous owner; Dreweatt’s, Château de Lasfonds sale, 16 November 2022, lot 143 Exhibited Spink, London, ‘Annual Exhibition of Watercolours and Drawings, 28 May – 21 June 1996, no. 4 This imposing drawing shows Satan holding his shield aloft to defend himself against Heaven. Romney made many illustrations to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ around 1794. This drawing appears to show a moment in Book 1 when Satan and the other rebels are ‘Hurled headlong, flaming from the ethereal sky’. Elsewhere in the poem Milton compares Satan’s shield to a moon seen through Galileo’s telescope. Another similar drawing in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum also shows Satan holding his shield above his head https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/16046 It is possible that the French Revolution, raging at this time, was close to Romney’s mind when he worked on these drawings for 'Paradise Lost', giving them some contemporary political significance.

Pencil on laid paper, partially watermarked and countermarked 1819 14.5 x 10.9 cm.; 5 ¾ x 4 ¼ inches Provenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021 Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 369 Exhibited: 'Hunt Exhibition Fry Collection', 1967, no. 17 (2) This work dates from c. 1820.

KT523 Pen and grey ink and watercolour over pencil on laid paper watermarked J WHATMAN, inscribed verso in pencil: Inscribed on old mount/near Chepstow/William Day 30x 39 cm.; 11 ¾ x 15 3/8 inches Provenance Cyril Fry This exceptionally fresh drawing is a lovely example of the work of William Day, an accomplished amateur artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1782 and 1801 as an Honorary Exhibitor. The late Judy Egerton wrote an article about him in The Connoisseur, July 1970, pp. 176-185. It is not known for certain when Day met John Webber, the Swiss-born artist who is famous for accompanying Captain Cook on his last expedition to the South Seas between 1776 and 1780. The Connoisseur article notes, without giving a source, that the friendship between the two artists “began about 1787”. Day and Webber were sketching together in the Wye valley in 1788, which is the first time that pairs of views by the two artists of the same subject are known to exist. Two watercolours by Webber of Chepstow Castle dated 1788, which are now in the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester (D.1900.12 & D.1970.77) (see Charles Nugent, British Watercolours in the Whitworth Art Gallery, 2003, p. 282) correspond to two watercolours by Day which were acquired by Chepstow Museum in 2012. A family note lists Day’s interest in the following order:’ Geology, Minerology and Painting’ and he formed one of the earliest private collections of minerals in England. His collection was carried on by his son William Day (1797-1849) and his grandson and passed to the Hampstead Central Library where it was destroyed by bombing during WWII.

Oil on panel 22 x 27 cm.; 8 ¾ x 10 5/8 inches Provenance The artist’s widow, Lady Kelly; Michael Parkin Fine Art Ltd; From whom purchased by J.G. Cluff, private collection U.K. until 2022 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 many countries from Egypt to China. His sketches of his travels are pleasingly spontaneous and tend to be painted more freely than his finished portraits. 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.

Pen and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of white 18.9 x 29 cm There 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

KT693 Elizabeth Gould (1804-1841) Maryland or northern bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) Signed l.r.: Eliza Gould/1829, watercolour, inscribed in pencil l.r.: Maryland Quail and further indistinctly inscribed, on wove paper watermarked 1816 64 x 50.5 cm.; 25 ¼ x 19 ¾ inches Provenance Thomas Barwick Lloyd Baker (1807-1886) of Hardwicke Court, Gloucestershire, promotor of reformatory schools and influential writer on crime and punishment; thence by family descent until 2025 Elizabeth Gould was one of the most important ornithological artists of the nineteenth century. Probably because much of her short life was spent in the shadow of her husband, Elizabeth Gould’s significant artistic and scientific contribution to the art of natural history has been overlooked traditionally. However, her reputation has recently been reassessed in Andrea Hart and Ann Datta’s monograph Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould, published in 2023. The present watercolour is signed ‘Eliza Gould’ which was John Gould’s name for her and drawn when she was twenty-five. Her early work shows her talent as a draughtswoman, meticulous attention to detail and ability to capture the characteristics of a species most convincingly. The bobwhite quail, also known as the Virginia quail is a small but distinctive species native to much of North America, including the eastern coast of Mexico and the islands of the Caribbean. It has been in decline for the last half century due to habitat loss. In Maryland, they are found throughout the year in the eastern counties and less west of Chesapeake Bay. The bobwhite is a small bird, ranging from 9 to 11 inches in length and 13 to 15 inches in wingspan, weighing from 6 to 9 ounces each. While there are regional variations in appearance among males across its range, the females are similar in all locations. Females are generally dull brown with a buff-coloured throat, while males have a white throat and a distinctive brow stripe with a black border. Eastern bobwhites may have rufous-coloured breast feathers.

Signed l.r.: W HUNT, watercolour with bodycolour on artist’s board 16 x 20.3 cm; 6 1/4 x 8 inches Primroses were a favourite subject of Hunt’s, and one which he frequently exhibited in the 1840s and 1850s. Hunt was born with a deformation of his legs which restricted his movement and he worked mainly from the studio, as painting outside was difficult for him. He specialised in carefully drawn smale-scale still lifes like this one as a result and pioneered new techniques of watercolour, using stipple techniques in subtle colour combinations and achieving a brightness of colour by overlaying washes over white gouache.

Signed with initials l.r., pen and brown ink 14.5 x 12 cm.; 5 ½ x 4 ¾ inches Provenance: Mrs F.L. Evans; With Colnaghi, 1951, catalogue no. 59 Duncan Beresford-Jones until 2000 The Shah of Persia presented a group of Arabian horses to the Prince Regent, commemorated in a painting of 1819 by H.B. Chalon (Tate Britain, TO2357). Landseer was also attracted to the subject and two versions of oils of an Arabian stallion with an Attendant in Persian dress are known, see Richard Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, 1982, p. 54. The Shah sent an Ambassador, Mirza Abdul Hassan Shiraz, to London in 1819 to discuss with Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, aspects of the Anglo-Persian treaty concluded by Sir Gore Ouseley in Tehran in 1812, and more recently revised. That treaty had established an Anglo-Persian alliance against a possible Franco-Russian one and the Shah was hoping for positive assurances that England would protect Persia in the event of a Russian invasion. The Ambassador left Tehran in October 1818 laden with presents from the Shah, including eighteen selected Arabian horses for the Prince Regent. The horses travelled with the Ambassador to Constantinople and then the British government organised their transport to London, an expensive undertaking arranged by a Mr George Willcox and costing over £1500. The presentation of the Shah’s gifts was listed in The Times of 24 May and took place at Carlton House, the Prince Regent’s London residence. There are seven horses pictured in Chalon’s painting, and it is not known how many of them survived the journey, but the present drawing presumably shows one of them. Mirza Abdu Hassan Shiraz’s visit aroused considerable social and popular attention but the visit was not a success, as following the defeat of Napoleon and the conclusion of an alliance with Russia the British no longer attached much importance to their Persian alliance.

Signed, inscribed and dated u.r.,: John Tunnard/F. 13 63, watercolour and gouache with stopping out and scratching out, original label attached to backboard, in original frame 19.2 x 27.8 cm Provenance: McRoberts and Tunnard, London 3 March 1964, sold 15 April 1964 to a private collector; Their sale Bonhams, 1 July 2009, lot 44 Literature: Tunnard ledger 63/4-F: 13; Peat and B.A. Whitton, John Tunnard, His Life and Works, 1997, p. 197, no. 810 Peat and Whitton note that the artist's later painting had a more assured quality. Tunnard distilled his early mathematical precision and added a more atmospheric feeling, ‘this is most noted in the swiftly executed smaller gouaches'.

Pencil 9 x 15 cm.; 3 ½ x 6 inches Provenance The 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