Portraits

Signed or inscribed with monogram twice l.r., oil on canvas, fragments of a label attached to reverse of frame54.5 x 45 cmFrame size 77 x 65 x 8 cmThe artistic tradition of painting a self-portrait with a mirror goes back self-consciously to Velazquez’ Las Meninas and has been used by many artists to probe their artistic identity.The artist stares out at the viewer with authority and proclaims self-confident virtuosity as he paints a reflection of himself standing in front of a large canvas (another reference to Las Meninas, although he has chosen the opposite side of the composition) within the large brown wooden mirror which frames his work. He adds another smaller arched wooden mirror to provide a reflection of the back of his head, a play on space and composition which takes our eye a moment or two to unravel. A gilt framed painting is leaning against the wall and a doorway to a sunlit garden can be seen in the distance introducing a light source in the same position as Velazquez chose in Las Meninas. A painter’s rag can be seen wedged into the space between the top of the post and the mirror itself, an indication of work in progress.An interesting account of the two most famous mirrors in the history of western art, the convex mirror in Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage and the rectangular mirror in Velazquez’ Las Meninas can be found in the exhibition catalogue of Reflections- Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites, A. Smith et al, National Gallery, 2018.Paul Audra was the son of a painter from whom he learnt his craft. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and then in 1888 at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the atelier of Gustave Moreau, he worked alongside Matisse and Rouault. He returned home to Valence and became the teacher of drawing at the local school and set up his own atelier, moving in 1908 to Nice when he ran the École des Art Décoratifs from 1910. After serving in WWI he started painting again in 1917 and met Renoir and also became reacquainted with Matisse who he helped find a studio in Nice and with whom he occasionally collaborated. He is known to have enjoyed painting self-portraits.Audra exhibited at the salon in Lyon in 1897 and at the Salons d’Automne from 1907-1920.

Gouache on vellum, in the original swept frame with labels attached, inscribed on a former label: ‘…ell Pinxt…about the year 1756’28 x 24 cm; 11 x 9 1/2 inchesProvenanceSotheby’s, London, 22 March 1979, lot 84; Davis & Long Company, New York, British Watercolours 1 - 29 November 1980, ex. catalogue; Private collection, U.S.; Paul F. Walter, New York, until 2017ExhibitedAnthony Reed, London, 1980, ‘Heads and Bodies’, no. 15, ill.;Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, ‘Sporting Art from East Anglian Collections’, 28 June-10 August 1980, no. 19, ill.Comparative Literature: cf. Walpole Soc. XLVI (l978) M.Kirby Talley Jr.: 'Thomas Bardwell of Bungay, artist and author'This rural conversation piece is of exceptional interest as it is rare to find 18th century conversation pieces on vellum on such a small scale; it also has a fine level of painted detail providing invaluable information for the social historian.Major Francis Longe (1726-1776), the owner of Spixworth Hall near Norwich, is painted at home, just returned from shooting, presenting his wife, Tabitha (née Howes) with a bag containing a live leveret, a symbol of love. His dog peers around the door which shows the park from which his master has just returned, and a spaniel lies at his mistress’s feet. The sitters’ identity as landowners of some standing is directly expressed. The label on the back of the painting states that Major Longe is 30 years of age and this dates the work to 1756. His only son Francis, born in 1748, is standing next to his mother and would have been 8 years old at the time this work was made.Francis Longe married Tabitha Howes soon after he came down from Cambridge. Francis and Tabitha had a son, Francis, in 1748. Francis (the elder) was educated at Westminster School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge and served as High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1752, an office his son Francis was also to hold. His wife was the daughter of John Howes (d. 1771) of Morningthorpe Manor, Norfolk and his wife Barbara, daughter and heiress of Rev. Thomas Sydnor; they married in 1720. Barbara Howes was painted with her four children by D. Heins, when Tabitha was 14 years old.Francis, the boy in the present drawing, inherited the estate on the death of his father in 1776. He had married Catherine Jackson (1752-1828) four years earlier. Catherine’s father had an important position in the Admiralty, and sponsored Captain James Cook’s voyage of discovery to Australia. Sydney was originally called Port Jackson after him. Francis and Catherine Longe had no issue; Francis died in 1812 and the estate passed to his cousin upon his widow’s death in 1828.Spixworth Hall was an Elizabethan house located just north of Norwich on the Buxton Road. The estate became mired in debt in the hands of Francis’s widow Catherine; there were disputes over her ability to sell or mortgage parts of the property. She was reduced to cutting down a grand avenue of oak trees that lined the drive up to the Hall to produce an income. Spixworth Park was inherited by a relative, a great-grandson of Francis Longe and grandson of his second son called John (b.1731), Rector of Spixworth until his death in 1806. The house was demolished in 1950.The attribution to Thomas Bardwell is historic and strongly based upon stylistic grounds as well as the inscription on the (now lost) label which accompanied it into the late 20th century. Bardwell was born in East Anglia in 1704 and died in Norwich on 9th September 1767 and became very popular amongst the gentry of East Anglia where he painted portraits, views of country houses and conversation pieces. The Geffrye Museum, London have an oil group portrait, possibly of the Brewster family of Beccles, dated 1736 in their collection with similarities to the present drawing, notably in the high level of detail of the interior. Another comparable oil of the Broke and Bowles family dated 1740 is in the Government Art Collection (and was included in 'Manners and Morals, Hogarth and British Painting 1700-1760', Tate 1987-8). There are however no other known vellum works by Bardwell on the scale of the present work.Later in his career, Bardwell undertook a tour through Yorkshire to Scotland and painted portraits in some of the large houses en route. In his later years he had a thriving practice in Norwich. In 1756 he published a treatise entitled 'The Practice of Painting and Perspective Made Easy', an important book of its kind and of its time.The genre which grew in popularity from the early 1730s was initially associated with painters such as William Hogarth and Gawen Hamilton. These "conversations" represent a peculiarly English contribution to the arts. They reflected the rising prosperity of the urban middle class in the early 18th century which led to a demand for a more intimate and modest style of portraiture appropriate to the social status of a new class of patrons. They often depict their subjects in their domestic surroundings, a contrast to the swagger of grand portraiture. The paintings thus produced with a high level of skill are exceptional visual evidence of their lifestyle and rising prosperity, their pride in their economic achievements and their self-confidence within their prosperous bourgeois surroundings.Alongside these urban interiors are the relaxed rural conversation pieces of the Tory squirearchy produced in the years after about 1740 by artists such as Arthur Devis, Francis Hayman, Edward Haytley and Thomas Gainsborough. Bardwell would appear to have been well aware of these latest developments of composition and style both locally and in the metropolis. The portrait possibly of the Brewster Family of 1736 (see above) shows he was a pioneer of the genre, in both East Anglia and the country as a whole.Paul Walter was born in 1935 to Fred and Anna Walter, co-founders of the New Jersey industrial instruments firm Thermo Electric. Anna Walter was a benefactor of the Morgan Library and Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Through collecting, patronage, and leadership roles at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Paul Walter became one of the city’s most respected connoisseurs.We are grateful to M. Kirby Talley Jr. for his comments on this work.

Signed with initials and dated l.r.: J.B. April 7 18.., pen and grey ink and grey wash16.2 x 21.2 cm.; 6 3/8 x 8 3/8 inchesLiteratureDr A. Sneddon, ‘Representing Magic in Modern Ireland, Belief, History and Culture,’, CUP, 2022, ill. fig. 1In Britain and Ireland amongst ordinary people popular belief in witches remained strong up until the twentieth century. This drawing appears to depict a consultation with a cunning person or white witch. A stock part of 18th and 19th century country life, these commercial, multifarious magical practitioners provided local communities with a range of services for a small fee, such as un-witching, fortune-telling, and divination. They could gain quite serious reputations and some prospered. The position gave them status in their local communities. The 'witch' seems to have a good-natured face and her bonnet is not peaked, and a cat is perched benignly on it. The old woman is seated, a horse skull above her chair and consulting a magical book or grimoire: the ownership of such expensive objects often added to the allure and kudos of cunning-folk. The family are approaching her in a deferential way (the man holds his hat, his wife looks expectant) to ask her help. The girl looks frightened, is she seeing the real witch, the cause of their maladies? After all, cunning-folk were often brought in to counter black or harmful magic.Boyne left Co. Down for London at the age of nine with his father and was apprenticed to the engraver William Byrne. He joined a company of strolling players until 1781 and thereafter established a drawing school.Boyne’s caricatures which provide an amusing insight into British contemporary life can be found in many public collections including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Fitzwilliam Museum and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.With thanks for Dr Andrew Sneddon for his comments on this drawing.

Inscribed in brown ink l.r.: Mrs Paget, pencil on laid paper, recto, with a portrait of a gentleman verso18 x 12.7 cm; 7 x 5 inchesProvenance: By descent in the artist’s family until 2017Henrietta (Etta) Paget, née Farr, was a painter, the daughter of statistician, William Farr. The Pagets, a family of artists and illustrators, were neighbours of the Yeats family in Bedford Park in west London in the 1890s.Etta studied at the Heatherley School of Fine Art where she met Henry Marriott Paget, RBA, (1857–1936). They married in 1879 and were leading members of the Bedford Park circle of writers and artists. The house in The Orchard had a north facing studio which Etta and Henry both used before their children were born. Bedford Park was known for its free thinkers and ‘New Women’ who participated in discussions ranging from politics to art and literature with men on an equal basis. The couple had four children over eleven years, one of whom, Dorothy, became an actress. Etta’s artistic practice dwindled in the face of family life. Etta, Henry and her sister Florence, the actress, were members of the Golden Dawn, a group involved with spiritualism and the occult. W. B. Yeats was also a member and Florence was said to have had an affair with him and George Bernard Shaw.Henry Paget was a painter of historical subjects and portraits and his portrait of W.B. Yeats is in the Ulster Museum. His paintings, especially his historical scenes, were illustrative rather than inspiring and he also painted mythological subjects. Paget worked as an illustrator for the Sphere in Constantinople during the Balkan War of 1912-13.

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.

Brigadier Twemlow’s Bengali Servant in an interiorSigned l.r. and l.l. with initials, inscribed verso in pen and brown ink: Brigr. Twemlow’s/Bengali Servant./W.C., grey and brown washes over pencil27.3 x 22 cm.; 10 ¾ x 8 5/8 inchesFramed size 34 x 29 cm.; 13 ½ x 11 ¼ inchesChapman was born in London. He studied at the East India Company’s Military Seminary at Addiscombe, where he won several exam prizes. After a year at Chatham he joined the Bombay Engineers. As Second Assistant in the Department of Roads and tanks he took charge of the works on the Agra road from the foot of the Thull Ghaut to Candore from 1846, receiving much praise for his work. He married Brigadier Twemlow’s second daughter Charlotte in Aurungabad in June 1848.After a leave of absence spent researching engineering projects in England in 1851, he joined the Institution of Civil Engineers as an Associate Member. On his return to India in October 1852, he was appointed to the survey of the construction of a canal between the Indus and Kurrachee. He concluded that a railway line would offer greater advantages. While investigating this he had a fatal accident on the river Indus in December 853. After his untimely death the road he had worked on was renamed Chapman Road, Thull Ghaut.Brigadier Twemlow (1796 - 1877) of the Royal (Bengal) Artillery was the commandant at Aurungabad (Nizam’s Contingent) who had a distinguished military career in India from 1812. He lived in a bungalow at Roza, ‘an old Mohammedan tomb surrounded by a walled garden’, (Francis Egerton, ‘Journal of a Winter’s tour in India’, 1852, vol. II, p. 225).He returned to England in 1853 and devoted himself to scientific and archaeological pursuits.Ayah and Child outside a bungalowSigned l.l. W.C., inscribed verso in pencil: Ayah & child./Egeltana (?)April 180/4 9, watercolour over pencil25.5 x 20.5 cm.; 9 7/8 x 8 1/8 inchesFramed size 33 x 28cm.; 13 x 11 inches (2)

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

William Wallace Collett-Mason (1895-1957)A young Indian man in military uniform and a turban holding a bayonetPencil, black chalk and watercolour57 x 36 cm.; 22 ½ x 14 ¼ inchesThis work was most probably drawn in the Jhelum area of the Punjab, now in Pakistan, near the border with Kashmir. From May 1921, Jhelum hosted the 10th Battalion of the newly reorganised 1st Punjab Regiment. The subject may be a soldier or a member of the Balochistan police force. His turban is in the style of the "Kulla Wali Pagh" which includes a "Cone Cap", which was worn by Punjabi Muslims. Head and shoulders portrait in profile of Supharas Khan from Jhelum with a comb in his hairPencil and black chalk, with a sketch of his torso verso56.5 x 35.5 cm.; 22 ¼ x 14 inches The sitter Supharas Khan came from the Jhelum area of the Punjab, now in Pakistan, near the border with Kashmir.Head and shoulders portrait of Supharas Khan, wearing a shirt and with a comb in his hairInscribed l.l.: Subharas Khan. 26/Punjab. From jelhum, pencil, with a sketch l.l.56.5 x 35.5 cm.; 22 ¼ x 14 inches The sitter is drawn from the front. The Jhelum area of the Punjab is now in Pakistan, near the border with Kashmir. From May 1921, Jhelum hosted the 10th Battalion of the newly reorganised 1st Punjab Regiment.Head and shoulders portrait of Supharas Khan, wearing a shirt with a comb in his hairInscribed l.l: S, pencil56.5 x 35.5 cm.; 22 ¼ x 14 inches Portrait of a young Indian man wearing a turbanSigned l.r.: COLLET-MASON -, pencil 56.5 x 35.5 cm.; 22 ¼ x 14 inches ProvenanceBy descent in the family of the artist until 2025

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.

Pencil on laid paper15 x 17.5 cm.; 6 x 7 ¼ inchesProvenanceSabin Galleries Ltd., “The Sublime and Beautiful’, 1973, no. 88The artist was an architect and surveyor as well as an artist, the fifth and youngest son of the architect George Dance the Elder, from a family of architects, artists and dramatists. His brother Nathaniel Dance (Dance-Holland) was also a painter and later a politician. Both brothers were founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. There has been confusion over the authorship of some of the caricatures with which both brothers are associated.

Evelyn De Morgan (1855 – 1919)The head of a womanColoured chalks on buff paper35.8 x 23.4 cm.; 14 1/8 x 9 ¼ inchesProvenancePrivate collection U.K., by descent until 2024.This beautiful drawing of the head of a woman deep in thought may be a study for the figure of Purity in De Morgan’s 1914 painting 'The Vision', also known as ‘1914', an allegoricalpainting inspired by World War I. The work depicts two women representing Peace andPurity in the foreground, with a demon representing war behind them (private collection, with the Louise Whitford Gallery/David Hughes in 1981).De Morgan was a pacifist, deeply moved by the horrors of the Boer War (1899-1902) andWorld War I, who made over fifteen paintings criticising war.

KT748Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919)A head study of the model Alessandro di MarcoColoured chalks on coloured paper35.5 x 32.5 cm: 14 x 12 ½ inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K.Alessandro di Marco was a professional artist’s model from Piedmont. Evelyn De Morgan made studies of him on several occasions, initially when she was at the Slade and later in her own studio. This drawing probably dates from 1890s. Another study of Alessandro in the De Morgan Foundation collection, for her 1899 painting The Valley of Shadows is not dissimilar to the present work (D_EDM_0038): https://www.demorgan.org.uk/collection/study-of-a-head-male/Di Marco was used by Evelyn De Morgan in two works depicting Boreas, 'Boreas and Oreithyia' (De Morgan Foundation P_EDM_0040, 1896) and 'Boreas and the Fallen Leaves' (c. 1910-14). He also features in 'Aurora Triumphans' (1876), 'Life and Thought Have Gone Away’ (1893), 'The Poor Man Who Saved the City' (1901), 'The Marriage of St. Francis and Holy Poverty' (1905), 'The Gilded Cage, A Soul in Hell’ (with curly hair) and '1914'.Di Marco modelled for Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-1896) in Rome and was one of the artists’ models working in London around 1870. Sir William Blake Richmond (1842-1921) described him as “a fellow so graceful and of such a colour, a kind of bronze gold” (S.T. Buckle, British Art Journal, Autumn 2012, Vol. 13, Issue 2, p.67:https://www.eb-j.org/pdfViewer/articles/MTA1OA== 2012). William Hamo Thornycroft noted in his diary that Alessandro sat for long periods of time without a break. He was the model for Merlin in Edward Burne-Jones’s earlier work 'The Beguiling of Merlin' (1872-77). He was also photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron. George Richmond described him as ‘the living embodiment of a classical sculpture’.

Inscribed l.r. (under mount): inscribed lower right: to place a / piece of very / white Paper / under it, but not / to paste it to any / thing – or kept in a book, black chalk, stump and watercolour21.5 x 17.6 cm.; 8 ½ x 6 7/8 inchesProvenance: With Sabin Galleries, London; Christie's, London, 11 November 1997, lot 22; Timothy Clowes until 2020

Watercolour over traces of pencil, inscribed verso: Llangollen-lan-Llangollen and inscribed on mount: Emily Dundas, a tiny sketch of a girl’s head verso9.3 x 9.4 cm; 3 5/8 x 3 5/8 inches, in a carved wood frameBoth the Ladies of Llangollen came from Ireland and it was here that the two women formed a strong emotional bond and attachment that would endure for the rest of their lives and attract the attention of Regency society.Eleanor Charlotte Butler (1739 –1829) (seated in this drawing and wearing the order of Saint Louis, an order of chivalry founded by the French king) was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Ormonde of Kilkenny Castle. Sarah Ponsonby (1755 – 1831) lived with relatives, Sir William and Lady Elizabeth Fownes, in Woodstock, County Kilkenny and was a second cousin of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough, father of Lady Caroline Lamb. Ponsonby attended boarding school at Kilkenny, and it was there, aged 13, that she met Butler, who was 16 years her senior. They became fast friends and corresponded regularly.Rather than face the possibility of being forced into unwanted marriages, or into a convent in the case of Butler, the pair left County Kilkenny together in April 1778 dressed as men, with a pistol and Sarah’s beloved dog Frisk. Their families tracked them down and tried to make them give up their plans. They finally succeeded in fleeing together to Wales and established themselves at a cottage near Llangollen, which they renamed Plas Newydd, in 1780, which they refurbished in a Gothick style. Windows were gothicised and old stained glass panels inserted into them. A library was filled with finely bound books and curiosities of all kinds, including a lock of Mary Queen of Scots' hair.They developed a passion for old, carved wood, from medieval churches to fragments of Elizabethan furniture. The staircase hall was lined with it, and a trio of canopies built on to the door and windows. The extraordinary front porch incorporates carvings of the four evangelists, Latin inscriptions, seventeenth century bedposts and lions donated by the Duke of Wellington (visitors soon learnt that to appear with gifts of carvings ensured a warm welcome). Over the years they added a circular stone dairy and created a garden in the picturesque style. Eleanor kept a diary of their activities.Living on a modest income they maintained a quiet life, studying literature and languages which they described as their ‘system’ and improving their estate. They did not actively socialise and were uninterested in fashion, wearing dark riding habits for formal and informal occasions and beaver hats, as seen in Dundas’ drawing. Their hair remained cropped in the ‘Titus’ style, fashionable in the 1790s and they continued to use hair power, which went out of fashion after the same decade. Many observers commented on their masculine appearance.Their life began to attract the interest of the outside world and Plas Newydd became a haven for visitors, as they become a celebrated example of 'retirement', leaving society for a rustic idyll, which delighted writers such as Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott. They were also admired for their 'Romantic Friendship’.Visitors including Southey, Wordsworth, Shelley, Lord Byron, Lady Caroline Lamb, Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington and Josiah Wedgwood visited. The two formed a literary circle that encompassed Mary Tighe, Ann Talbot, Anna Seward, Hester Thrale (otherwise known as Hester Piozzi, Dr. Johnson’s friend, was a neighbour), Henrietta Bowdler, Madame de Genlis and William Wordsworth. Copious correspondence resulted, some of which, for example letters to Anna Seward, have been published (Collected Letters of Anna Seward, 1811).On some days as many as twenty visitors arrived. Their notoriety spread abroad and continental visitors includedPrince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, the German nobleman and landscape designer, who wrote admiringly about them. Queen Charlotte wanted to see their cottage and persuaded George III to grant them a pension.There was speculation that there was more than romantic friendship between Eleanor and Sarah in their own lifetime. The diaries of Anne Lister (1791–1840), an English landowner from Halifax, West Yorkshire, record a visit to the Ladies of Llangollen in 1822. Her diaries contain accounts of her own lesbian relationships written in code. She was fascinated by the two women and discreetly tried to establish if they were more than just friends, concluding that it seemed unlikely that their friendship was just platonic. Their queer materiality has been explored by Fiona Brideoak in ’Desire, Indeterminism and the Legacies of Criticism’, 2017.Butler and Ponsonby lived together for over fifty years until the end of their lives. Their books and glassware carried both sets of initials and their letters were jointly signed. Eleanor Butler died in 1829, and Sarah Ponsonby two years later. They are both buried at St Collen's Church in Llangollen.Plas Newydd is now a museum run by Denbighshire County Council and is open to the public.Although the Ladies of Llangollen's fame was extraordinary, romantic female friendships were common in eighteenth century Europe. Women often spent a great deal of time in each other's company and developed strong, intense relationships. Female friends frequently wrote to one another using passionate, romantic language that can suggest a sexual relationship to modern readers. Some of the relationships reflected in correspondence were no doubt sexual, others may simply have reflected the conventions of friendship. It is impossible to find conclusive proof whether the relationship between Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby was sexual or not, but there is abundant evidence that it was loving.Not that many images of the pair are known as the ladies disliked having their portrait taken. Lady Mary Leighton (née Parker) sketched them individually in pencil and a lithograph was made by Richard James Lane, after Lady Leighton circa 1830-1840s showing them seated at Plas Newydd. A second pirated version was made by James Henry Lynch, printed by Day & Haghe, circa 1833-1845 and shows the pair full-length wearing riding habits and top hats in their garden. Lady Delamere sketched them in old age showing them walking inside Plas Newydd (see E. Mavor, 'The Ladies of Llangollen- a study in Romantic Friendship',1971, ill. facing frontispiece and facing p. 97).Provenance: Augusta Raymond-Barker (step-niece of the artist), Fairford Park, Gloucestershire; thence by family descent until 2016See also:Fiona Brideoak, 'The Ladies of Llangollen – Desire, Indeterminism and the Legacies of Criticism', 2017.The artist of this drawing, which lies somewhere between portraiture and caricature, was Lady Emily Dundas, née Reynolds-Moreton, the fourth daughter of Thomas, 1st Earl of Ducie. In 1847 she married Admiral Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas, GCB, (1785-1862) as his second wife. He became the First Naval Lord in the first Russell ministry in July 1847 and they lived at Admiralty House. Thackeray records that during the 1850 season Lady Emily Dundas gave a glittering party.Lady Emily Dundas is recorded as accompanying her husband on many official engagements such as inspecting the fleet in various places from Cork to Malta and as far afield as New Zealand. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean in 1852 and led all naval operations in the Black Sea, including the bombardment of Sevastopol in October 1854 during the Crimean War. She went with him to Turkey and took a house at Therapia.Lady Emily Dundas had four sisters. Her youngest sister, Lady Catherine Reynolds-Moreton (d. 2 Dec. 1892), married in 1841, John Raymond-Barker, of Fairford Park, Gloucestershire (d. 21 May 1888). He had two daughters by his first wife, Harriet Bosanquet (1798-1830) Augusta (1827-1900) and Leonora. Augusta assembled the friendship album from which this watercolour comes which reveals the women of her family and circle as accomplished watercolourists.The artist of this drawing, which lies somewhere between portraiture and caricature, was Lady Emily Dundas, née Reynolds-Moreton, the fourth daughter of Thomas, 1st Earl of Ducie. In 1847 she married Admiral Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas, GCB, (1785-1862) as his second wife. He became the First Naval Lord in the first Russell ministry in July 1847 and they lived at Admiralty House. Thackeray records that during the 1850 season Lady Emily Dundas gave a glittering party.Lady Emily Dundas is recorded as accompanying her husband on many official engagements such as inspecting the fleet in various places from Cork to Malta and as far afield as New Zealand. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean in 1852 and led all naval operations in the Black Sea, including the bombardment of Sevastopol in October 1854 during the Crimean War. She went with him to Turkey and took a house at Therapia.Lady Emily Dundas had four sisters. Her youngest sister, Lady Catherine Reynolds-Moreton (d. 2 Dec. 1892), married in 1841, John Raymond-Barker, of Fairford Park, Gloucestershire (d. 21 May 1888). He had two daughters by his first wife, Harriet Bosanquet (1798-1830) Augusta (1827-1900) and Leonora. Augusta assembled the friendship album from which this watercolour comes which reveals the women of her family and circle as accomplished watercolourists.

Pencil and grey wash20.2 x 14.6 cm.; 8 1/8 x 5 ¾ inchesFrame size 41 x 34 cm.; 16 x 13 2/8 inchesProvenance: By descent in the Seymour family and that of Earl Spencer, until sold at Christie's, London, 'The Althorp Attic Sale', 7 July 2010, lot 1;with Martyn Gregory, London;with Ellison Fine Art, London; Timothy Clowes until 2020The brothers, drawn here in the mid 1790s, were the children of Vice-Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour and Lady Anne Horatia Waldegrave. Sir Horace entered the army and served as an MP. Frederick was to marry twice, firstly Lady Mary Gordon, daughter of the 9th Marquess of Huntly and then, in 1832, Lady Augusta Hervey, daughter of Frederick, 1st Marquess of Bristol.This picture descended in the Spencer family until the Christie's sale of 2010. The Seymours were related to the Spencers by marriage. Sir Horace married, as his second wife, Frances Poyntz, whose sister was Georgiana, wife of Frederick, 4th Earl Spencer. She died in 1851 and three years later the Earl married Sir Horace's daughter, Adelaide.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Nina Hamnett/Oct 1924/Paris, pencil, partial watermark ENGLAND25.4 x 25.7 cm.; 10 x 10 1/8 inchesProvenanceBy family descent until 2024This may be a portrait of Mary Torr, painted in oils by Hamnett in 1924.The daughter of an army officer, Hamnett was born in Wales and had a peripatetic childhood, showing early talent for drawing and painting. In 1911 she set up a studio in Grafton Street in Fitzrovia. Throughout her early career she worked at the Omega Workshops and was well known on the London art scene. Hamnett moved to Paris in 1913 and lived in Montparnasse. She attended Marie Wassilieff's academy where she had lessons with Fernand Leger, worked as an artist’s model and met Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Gertrude Stein.She was at the heart of the Anglo-French exchange of artistic ideas at this period and came and went between Paris and London. Hamnett was back in France in 1920 enjoying the Bohemian life of the French capital with other artists and seeking out the avant-garde.One of Hamnett’s first solo exhibitions was held at the Eldar Gallery, London in 1918 and consisted mainly of portraits of figures she had met in Paris.Hamnett, dubbed the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ is now recognised as a leading proponent of British Modernism and a retrospective of her work, including many drawings, was held at Charleston in 2021.The grandmother of the previous owner and her husband used to frequent the Fitzroy Tavern and drink with the artists and intellectuals who were regulars there.

Signed l.r.: Helleu, black, red and white chalks70 x 48.5 cm; 27 1⁄2 x 19 inchesProvenanceNevill Keating Pictures Ltd., London;Private collection until 2022This elegant drawing aux trois crayons of the artist’s wife Alice, drawn from behind, is recorded in the online archive of Les Amis de Paul-César Helleu as PCH DE1-3216.Helleu studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1876 in the atelier of Jean-Léon Gerome. In Paris, his circle of intimate friends included fellow artists Giovanni Boldini, Alfred Stevens, Edgar Degas, Rodin, Claude Monet and notably the Americans Whistler and Sargent, with whom he briefly shared a studio.Helleu exhibited several large pastel portraits to great acclaim at the Salons of 1885 and 1886, including one of Alice Louis-Guérin, to whom he became engaged in 1885. He and Alice married in 1886 at the church of Saint-Pierre in Neuilly. Although friendly with many of the Impressionist painters and invited by Degas to participate in the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition of 1886, Helleu declined to do so. He exhibited six pastels at the Salon des Pastellistes at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1887, including two further portraits of Alice. At this time he first met Comte Robert de Montesquieu, who was to become his leading patron and who, in 1913, published the first important monograph on the artist.In 1889 Paul and Alice Helleu spent some time with Sargent at Fladbury in England, and he made several studies of Alice and an oil of Paul painting her (Brooklyn Museum, New York). The 1890s were a successful decade for Helleu, who moved comfortably in society in both France and England. He obtained numerous lucrative portrait commissions and enjoyed considerable financial success. Helleu also met and enjoyed a long friendship with Marcel Proust, who is thought to have based the character of the painter Elstir in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu on him.Encouraged by Sargent, Helleu began travelling to America in 1902, where his reputation had preceded him, and he enjoyed further success drawing elegant Society women. His subjects included the Comtesse Greffulhe, Queen Alexandra and Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough. These works were greatly admired by his contemporaries. His preferred subject remained Alice, whom he drew many times.The writer Edmond de Goncourt wrote of Alice Helleu that [s]he was incapable of making a movement that was not graceful and elegant, and ten times a day he [Paul-César Helleu] tried to capture those movements with a quick drypoint sketch.In 1931, four years after Helleu’s death, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris. Today his work can be found in many museum collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Signed l.r.: W. HUNT, pencil, tiny sketches of figures and a list verso, on wove paper12 x 8.4 cm.; 7 ¼ x 4 ¾ inchesProvenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 370Exhibited: 'Hunt Exhibition Fry Collection', 1967, no. 17 (1)This drawing dates from circa 1820. Hunt drew the same girl on another occasion in a similar pose (Rossetti Collection, J. Witt, ibid. no. 492).

Pencil on laid paper, partially watermarked and countermarked 181914.5 x 10.9 cm.; 5 ¾ x 4 ¼ inchesProvenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 369Exhibited: 'Hunt Exhibition Fry Collection', 1967, no. 17 (2)This work dates from c. 1820.

Signed l.r.: W. HUNT, watercolour over pencil with scratching out34 x 24.5 cm.; 13 3/8 x 9 5/8 inchesProvenanceJ.P. Heseltine (1843-1929);Christopher W. Witt, Buckinghamshire;The Bourne Gallery, Surrey;David Pike (1936-2024)LiteratureJ.P. Heseltine, John Varley and his Pupils, W. Mulready, J. Linnell and W. Hunt. Original Drawings in the Collection of J.P.H. 1918, ill. p. 13;John Witt, William Henry Hunt (1790-1864) Life and Works, with a catalogue, no. 539, ill. pl. 66This shows Sarah Hunt, the artist’s wife, aged about twenty-one reading a letter. The couple were married in 1830 and Hunt used his wife as a model in 1830s, when this work was drawn. It may be compared with a similar example in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum entitled ‘Love Missive' (J. Witt, no. 529). The same chest and chair can be seen in both works.John Postle Heseltine (1843-1929) was a stockbroker and senior partner in the family firm, Heseltine, Powell & Co. He was a draughtsman and etcher, a collector oil paintings, drawings and watercolours of the English and Continental schools and a Trustee of the National Gallery who advised on purchases.

William Henry Hunt, OWS (1790-1864)Lighting the BrazierSigned l.l.: W HUNT., watercolour over traces of pencil with scratching out, title inscribed on original frame36.2 x 26.7 cm.; 14 ¼ x 10 ½ inchesProvenanceAgnew’s, Liverpool, no. 253;Malllams, Oxford, 19 March 2026, lot 443This unpublished watercolour is a notable addition to the group of black subjects drawn by W.H. Hunt held in public collections in the UK and USA. It fits into a group on which Hunt was working in 1830s depicting black children warming themselves by fires. For domestic servants lighting fires was a daily job.In the 1830s Hunt exhibited twenty humorous images of children which were later lithographed as Hunt’s Comic Sketches published in 1844, including two of black children, including Master James Crow -Out of His Element and Miss Jim Ima Crow seated by fires. The Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, has the original watercolour of Jim Crow which appears to show the same black boy as in the present work (see J. Witt, William Henry Hunt (1790-1846), 1982, no.477, see lithograph). Both boys are shown seated in front of a brazier, a suggestion that they feel the cold alluded to in the title of the lithograph, seated on a barrel or basket of the same height. The present watercolour (executed circa 1830-40) also has similarities with a watercolour of the same black model holding a slate at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London also entitled ‘A Brown Study’ (FA526). Both drawings share the same neutral background and have an added strip at the top. Another version of this work, without an added strip, is in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art (B1975.4.583).Hunt made several other studies of black sitters, including a drawing of a young girl in pencil on buff paper in the Courtauld Institute, London and a boy posing as a boxer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2020.120). Jan Marsh has suggested that because of Hunt’s choice of theme his sitters are most likely to have been youths aged around 10 – 14 years old who were not at school or apprenticed but earning small amounts in the street running errands, carrying parcels and doing other small jobs, and were therefore visible and available to artists notably in London, Bristol and Liverpool (private email March 2026). Hunt preferred to use the same sitters as models. Hunt was born with a deformation of his legs which restricted his movement and seems to have had a form of dwarfism. According to his early biographer, F. G. Stephens, Hunt was: ‘was a little less than… five foot. He was broad as well as round shouldered and his head was large beyond proportion to the rest of his figure which the torso was that of a larger man. His large and long frock coats and loose trousers although favourable to him on other accounts, did not add to his outward graces.’ . Stephens adds that Hunt’s personal disabilities: ‘frequently made him reserved and not very easily accessible to strangers.’ While Hunt’s interactions with black sitters were inevitably informed by the prejudices of his age it is quite possible that his own disability drew him to marginalised members of his society. He is known to have befriended black acrobats and musicians.British artists showed increasing interest in Black subjects during the 1830s. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire over the years 1833 -1838 and the abolition movement was hotly debated in Parliament and beyond.

Signed l.l.: John, pencil and black chalk45.5 x 30.5 cm.; 17 7/8 x 12 inchesProvenanceLady Hornby (1934-2021)ExhibitedAugustus John, Olympia, 23-28 February 1999, no. 61 (no catalogue)This freely drawn, captivating drawing dates from c. 1904-1906. It epitomises the qualities of John’s fluent draughtsmanship and his ability to capture the essence of a sitter with apparent ease. Its immediacy, sureness and simplicity place it amongst his finest female portraits.Sheran Cazalet was the daughter of Peter Cazalet, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother’s, racing trainer. Her grandparents, William and Maud Cazalet, were friends of Augustus John. She married Sir Simon Hornby in 1968. He was the last family member to serve as chairman of WH Smith and served as chairman of the Design Council; he died in 2010. The couple lived at The Ham, Oxfordshire, where they assembled a collection of twentieth century works on paper, created a beautiful garden and entertained in style. Many of the contents of The Ham were sold at Christie’s, London, in 2012.

Pencil26.5 x 18 cm.; 10 1⁄2 x 7 1/8 inchesProvenanceEstate of the artist (his daughter Henrietta Phipps), until 2000;Davis & Langdale Company, New York, 2000;Private collection, from 2000 until 2023Exhibited:Davis & Langdale Company, New York, 2000, Henry Lamb: Works on Paper, no. 13 [checklist]This compelling drawing was executed around 1930.Henry Lamb was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1883, shortly before his father moved the family to Manchester, where he spent his childhood. He studied medicine before abandoning this path to be an artist. At twenty-two he left for London to study under Augustus John and William Orpen at their Chelsea Art School.John was a particularly formative influence and Lamb moved to Paris with him a few years later. Lamb spent a couple of summers on the south coast of Brittany, in search of a more traditional way of life. This impulse drew Lamb to Gola Island in Northern Ireland two years later.In London in 1905, Lamb joined the Fitzroy Street Group and was a founding member of both the Camden Town Group and the London Group. He married Nina Forrest, or Euphemia, in 1906 but the marriage proved short-lived. He was friendly with the Bloomsbury Group, having known Vanessa Stephen and Clive Bell from his early days in London, but he often had little patience with them. He was close friends with the eminent critic and biographer Lytton Strachey and between 1912 and 1914 he painted his portrait, now held in the Tate and one of his greatest works.In the First World War, Lamb served as a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps in France, Salonika and Palestine; he was awarded the Military Cross. He was not an official war artist but drew extensively and the resulting oils are an important part of his oeuvre.In 1928 he married Lady Pansy Pakenham and moved to Coombe Bissett in Wiltshire. Lamb was appointed an official war artist for the Second World War, making portraits of soldiers and studies of servicemen at work across the South of England. Lamb was elected as an associate of the Royal Academy and a Trustee of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate at this time. He was finally awarded full membership of the Royal Academy in 1949.Interest in Lamb’s work has revived in recent years, and he has been the subject of recent exhibitions at Salisbury Museum and Poole Museum. His work can be found in many collections around the world, including the Tate, the Imperial War Museum, the Government Art Collection and the National Gallery of Canada.

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).

Head and shoulders, pen and brown ink and wash22.9 x 17.3 cm; 9 x 10 3/4 inchesProvenance: Private collection, UK, bought at a charity auction at the Finchingfield GuildhallLandseer’s caricatures are a less well-known aspect of his art. They were made for private circulation and show Landseer’s effortless ability to capture the physical oddities of his subjects in an acute yet affectionate fashion. This drawing was once thought to depict Paganini but the subject is currently unidentified.

Signed with initials l.r., pen and brown ink14.5 x 12 cm.; 5 ½ x 4 ¾ inchesProvenance:Mrs F.L. Evans;With Colnaghi, 1951, catalogue no. 59Duncan Beresford-Jones until 2000The 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.

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).

Signed with initials and dated u.r.: A.L./1880, sepia wash over pencil with a touch of red chalk on laid paper, in the original frame44.5 x 32 cm.; 17 ½ x 12 ½ inchesProvenanceFrank Edward Bliss until 1923; (L. 265 and 988 supplement), his sale at Christie’s, London, 9 February 1923, lot 25;Arthur Crossland, Heaton Mount, Bradford,His sale at Christie’s, London, 3 February 1956, lot 59, bt, Meatyard;Arnold Fellows collection no. 322;Bequeathed to Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall until sold by a charitable trust, 2023ExhibitedCity of Bradford Corporation Art Gallery Jubilee Exhibition, 1930, no. 453This powerful drawing is a fine example of the extraordinary technique of Alphonse Legros. A painter, sculptor and etcher, Legros was born in Dijon and spent his early career in Paris. Legros was encouraged by Whistler to come to London in 1863. He was Professor of Fine Art at the Slade from 1875-1892, where his insistence on the quality of line laid the foundation for the Slade tradition of fine draughtsmanship. He set out to broaden the syllabus, introducing etching and, in 1884, classes in medal making.Frank Edward Bliss (1847-1930) was born in America and moved to London in 1886. He amassed a large collection of modern prints from 1905 and put together a famous collection of the work of Legros (see the British Museum letterbook for 1929). He sold them in three sales in 1913, 1920 and 1923. Bliss returned to the USA in 1923 to live in California.Arnold Fellows was a pupil at Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall, between 1911 and 1917. He became a master of the school for a brief period, before moving to spend the remainder of his life as a teacher at Chigwell School in Essex. Fellows devoted much of his life to collecting art, notably works on paper, and eventually donated his entire collection to Queen Mary’s Grammar School. He was the author of The wayfarer's companion: England's history in her buildings and countryside, published by Oxford University Press, 1937.

KT663Thérèse Lessore (1884 – 1945)In a Belgian TrainSigned and dated l.r.: Lessore/1921, watercolour over pencil, with a pencil outline, inscribed in pencil with title beneath mount l.r.: in a Belgian trainImage 23 x 26.5 cm.; 9 x 10 3/8 inches, full sheet 28 x 32 cm.; 11 x 12 5/8 inchesProvenanceBonhams, London, 17 November 1988, lot 27;Sandra Lumis Fine Art, London;Bernard Kelly, bought from the above, his sale at Lyon and Turnbull, London, 15 January 2025, lot 225The artist came from an artistic family and was the daughter of the painter Jules Lessore (1849-1892) and sister of the sculptor Frederick Lessore (1879-1951). Born in Brighton, she attended the South-Western Polytechnic Art School and the Slade School of Fine Art from 1904–9, where she won the Melville Nettleship Prize for Figure Composition. She exhibited regularly at the New English Art Club and the Goupil Gallery, and had her first solo exhibition at Eldar Gallery, with a catalogue preface written by Walter Sickert. She was a founder member of The London Group, the artist-run organisation of radical painters which grew out of The Camden Town Group, where she was to exhibit regularly. Lessore was amongst the most talented female artists of The London Group.She married firstly the artist Bernard Adeney and in then 1926 she married Walter Sickert, as his third wife. He described her as “a Persian miniature”. The two artists shared a love of the music-hall and the circus which feature in both their work. Her contributions to exhibitions at The London Group were fewer after her marriage to Sickert who was 24 years her senior and for whom she cared and acted as his artist’s assistant.This acutely observed watercolour of two fellow passengers observed by the artist in Belgium a few years after the end of WWI verges on caricature.

Signed with initials on border l.r.: F .Y (?) M, and inscribed l.c.: Female Hottentot watercolour on wove paper, with a laid paper borderDrawing size 20.6 x 15.3 cm.; 8 ½ x 6 inches, with border 26 x 20 cm.; 10 ¼ x 7 7/8 inchesThis drawing came from a now disbound English album which contained works on paper from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Slave Girl of the CapeSigned with initials on border l.r.: F .Y. (?) M, and inscribed l.c.: Slave Girl of the Cape, watercolour on wove paper, with a laid paper border watermarked 1801Drawing size 20.3 x 14.6 cm.; 8 1/8 x 5 ¾ inches, with border 25.8 x 20.2 cm.; 10 1/8 x 8 inchesThis drawing came from a now disbound English album which contained works on paper from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.Slavery in South African began around 1650 when the Cape colony was controlled by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) when Cape Town was founded as a supply port for their shipping. The trade continued until the eventual abolition of slavery in the Colony, by then under British rule, in 1834. The British had banned trading in slaves between her colonies in 1807 but the final emancipation was delayed until 1834.

Daniel Maclise , R.A. (1806-1870)A seated girl reading in a doorwayPencil13.5 x 8 cm.; 5 ¼ x 3 1/8 inchesProvenanceCovent Garden Gallery Ltd.Daniel Maclise was born in Cork to a family of Scottish descent. After a brief period working in a bank, Maclise’s passion for drawing led him to pursue a career in art which he studied at the Cork Society of Arts.He moved to London in 1826 to attend the Royal Academy where he excelled as a student, particularly in life drawing and history painting. He began exhibiting in the RA in 1829, was made an associate in 1830, and an academician in 1840.

Signed and dated u.r.: Mancinelli/Geny (?). 1882, pencil16.8 x 14.3 cm; 6.6 x 5.6 inchesProvenance: David M. Daniels and Stevan Beck Baloga, their sale at Sotheby’s 29 October 2002, lot 116Exhibited: Shepherd Gallery, R.J.M. Olsen, ‘Italian 19th Century Drawings and Watercolours, An Album: Camuccini & Minardi to Mancini & Balla,’, Spring 1976, no. 155, ill. p. 45;The American Federation of Arts, ‘Italian Drawings 1780-1890’, March 1980-January 1981, no 84This is an exceptionally fine drawing by this Italian portrait painter who lived for most of his life in Naples where he was honorary Professor of the Institute of Fine Arts. His subjects included Umberto I and Margherita di Savoia (1884) and other Italian aristocrats, as well as Orientalist and historical work.

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.

Sara Page (1855-1943)Portrait of MarieSigned l.l.: S Page, inscribed u.l.: MARIE, oil on board, labelattached verso: Papeterie F. Dupré, 141 Faubourg St Honoré, Paris46 x 38 cm.; 18 x 15 inchesLiteratureOlga Baird (Yatsenko), Sara Wells Page (1855-1943): a Parisianartist from Wolverhampton, 2022, p. 12 (ill). Sara Page was born in Moxley, Staffordshire, the fourth child of Samuel Page, a successful timber merchant, and his wife Sara Wells Page, the daughter of a wealthy local ironmaster. Her parents died in the 1870s leaving her and her siblings financially independent. From 1884-1891 she studied drawing at Wolverhampton School of Art and then travelled to Italy to continue her artistic education, making copies in oil after originals in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. She was photographed in Venice by the photographers Fratelli Vianelli.In 1892, having been encouraged by Sir Frederick Leighton, Page went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian, under Bouguereau, Tony Robert-Fleury and Gabriel Ferrier. Male and female students received the same training which included drawing from live models, the sexes taught in separate ateliers. One of the ateliers for female students was at 5 rue de Berri. Page wrote that she ‘worked under the best French artists at the Académie Julian and found there both guidance and much interest in the companionship of many different nations, and as all the students (about 500) competed in efforts for the medal in painting and sculpture, life was animated’25. Page received a medal for portrait painting.

Signed twice l.r.: Mary and M.Perrin, watercolour over traces of pencil with bodycolour and gum arabic, inscribed verso: The Flamingo Fan/by/Miss Mary Perrin,/Fortfield House/Terenure/Co Dublin/From Professor McHardy F.R.C.S./March 1911/Exhibition picture Royal Academy, further inscribed on fragments of original label attached to backboard: Miss Mary P….n/Fortfield House/Terenure Co. Dublin/No:2/The Flamingo Fan/…Dubli/…House/…/ure/DublinCircular, 21 cm diam.; 8 ¼ inches, on artist’s board measuring 22.5 x 22 cm.; 8 ¾ x 8 5/8 inchesFrame size 35.5 x 35.5 cm.; 14 x 14 inchesExhibitedRoyal Academy, London, 1905, no. 929Mary Perrin specialised in intense watercolour portraits of female subjects, often drawing them with elaborate hats or coiffures. She also painted landscapes.Her work is recorded frequently in Irish exhibitions. Perrin exhibited at the Water Colour Society of Ireland (WCSI) which was founded in 1870 as the Amateur Drawing Society by an informal group of six well-connected women from Co. Waterford, Baroness Pauline Prochazca, Miss Harriet Keane, Miss Frances Keane, Miss Henrietta Phipps, Miss Fanny Currey and Miss Fanny Musgrave. Eight years after its founding, the organisation briefly became the "Irish Fine Art Society" before settling to its current name in 1888. It held (and still holds) an Annual Exhibition of the work of its members.Perrin started to exhibit at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in London in 1896 at their galleries at 195 Piccadilly. Perrin also showed regularly at the Royal Academy, the Society of Women Artists and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.Perrin’s work was frequently praised by contemporary critics who remarked on the ‘richness and power’ of her watercolour (Freeman’s Journal, 8 March 1886, in a review of The Irish Fine Art Society exhibition) and she won many prizes at various Irish societies.The backboard labels on this work records her Irish address Fortfield House, Terenure, Co. Dublin. Another work by her has a partial address in London, …s (Hans?) Crescent, London SW., suggesting that she moved between the two cities.Perrin took an active part in the social life of Dublin and is often mentioned in contemporary newspapers as attending charitable and major social events such as the Viceregal Drawing Room in Belfast and costume balls.The artist’s family home, Fortfield House in Dublin, was bought by the Rt. Hon. John Hatchell (1788-1870) in 1858. He was an Irish lawyer and politician and his daughter Penelope married John Perrin. The house remained in the Perrin-Hatchell family until the death of Mary Perrin in 1929. In her will she left her estate to George Hatchell of Tanganyika. The house was demolished in 1834.This work may have belonged to Professor Malcolm McHardy, FRCSE (d.1912) who was Professor of Ophthalmology at King’s College and Ophthalmic Surgeon to King’s College Hospital. He published extensively on ophthalmic surgery.

Signed and dated in gold paint l.l.: Geo Richmond.1834, watercolour over pencil heightened with white and gold and touches of gum arabic35.3 x 25.1 cm.; 13 ¾ x 9 7/8 inchesProvenanceBy descent in the family of the sitter until 2015;Their sale, Bonhams, London, 24 November 2015, lot 95;Private collection, U.K.LiteratureR. Lister, George Richmond A Critical Biography, 1981, p. 162, nos. 203 and 204The sitter wears the uniform of the Madras Horse Artillery, and the Order of the Bath Companion’s breast badge, and is standing in an Indian landscape with his hand upon a cannon.Lieutenant Colonel Sir Charles Hopkinson was born on September 14th, 1783, in Grantham, Lincolnshire. He had a distinguished career in the service of the East India Company and commanded the Company's artillery during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-1826). He was made a Companion of the Most Honourable Military Order of The Bath and subsequently knighted for his services. He died in December 1864.The Madras Army was the army of the Presidency of Madras and run by the East India Company until 1858. It was finally merged into the Indian army in 1895.After his marriage to Julia Tatham in 1831 George Richmond turned to portrait painting. He quickly established a fashionable painting practise and became one of the most fashionable portrait painters of his time.

Pen and grey ink and grey wash over pencil24.5 x 17.1 cm.; 10 x 6 ¾ inchesProvenanceWith 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 143ExhibitedSpink, London, ‘Annual Exhibition of Watercolours and Drawings, 28 May – 21 June 1996, no. 4This 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 headhttps://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/16046It 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.

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827)A sheep in wolf’s clothingPen and brown ink and watercolour over traces of pencil 17 x 14.2 cm.; 6 ¾ x 6 ½ inchesFrame size 32.5 x 29 cm.; 12 ½ x 11 ½ inchesProvenanceThe Leger Galleries Ltd., August 1961;Private collection U.K. until 2021ExhibitedThe Leger Galleries Ltd, August 1961This amusing, mildly erotic, drawing, which dates from c. 1805-1820, illustrates a subject which Rowlandson drew often throughout his career. The young beauty donning men’s clothes is clearly the dominant figure in the composition which shows an ageing man ogling the progress of her toilette from around the doorway and an old crone assisting her. There is ambiguity in the subject which may show an elopement or, more likely, an actress preparing for the stage.In late eighteenth century comedies an actress who dresses as a man to meet her lover is a frequent plot device. The present drawing may represent either such a scene or an actress in her dressing room putting on her costume in preparation for this. The bottle lends weight to the possibility of this being a theatrical subject which may be compared with the 1810 print ‘Dramatic demireps at their morning rehearsal’ which contains numerous bottles [link].A further example of Rowlandson tackling a similar subject can be found in ‘dressing for a masquerade’ in the collection of the Barber Institute [link], a subject after which a print was made in 1788, ‘Cyprians; Dressing for a Masquerade’.

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.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: To Fitzroy Carrington/hommage/Albert Sterner/1906, red, black and white chalks on buff paper, with fragmentary original label66.6 x 41.7 cm.; 26 1⁄4 x 16 3/8 inchesProvenanceFrederick Keppel & Co., no. 5542;Bourne Gallery, Reigate, U.K.;Private collection U.K. until 2022Albert Sterner was born in London to American parents. He started his artistic training at the Art Institute in Birmingham and continued his studies under Gustave Boulanger, Jules Lefebvre, and Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1879, Sterner went to America, working initially as a lithographer and draughtsman in Chicago. In 1885, he founded his own workshop in New York and in 1907 was appointed chairman of the Society of Illustrators. In 1934, Sterner became a member of the National Academy of Design.Sterner’s extensive work for the press included Harper's, Quiver, Pick-me-up, English Illustrated, Black and White, Life, and Scribner's. He illustrated many literary works including L'ennui, Madame! by D. Meunier, Prue and I by G.W. Curtis and Fenwick's Career by Mrs Ward. He exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Français, winning an award in 1891 and a bronze medal in 1900 at the Universal Exhibition as well as a gold medal in Munich in 1905. Sterner’s work can be found in many US and international museums.Fitzroy Carrington (1869 – 1954) was an English-born American editor who became known as a leading authority on prints, particularly those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Born in England he moved to the United States in 1886.From 1892 to 1913 he worked closely with Frederick Keppel & Co., the New York print dealers founded in 1868, and joined the firm after 1899. From 1911-1917 he was editor of The Print Collector’s Quarterly. In 1912 he became curator of prints at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He published several books about prints and print collecting.The elegant subject of this drawing is his wife, Charlotte Austen Carrington, née Singleton. The couple had a son Harold, born in 1900.

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.: E. Sumner/1899, black chalk25 x 17.5 cm.; 9 7/8 x 6 7/8 inchesProvenancePrivate collection U.K. until 2023The artist of the work was known as Lily, the oldest daughter of the Rev. John Henry Robertson Sumner and his second wife Elizabeth Anne(née Gibson). The family lived at Kelbarrow near Grasmere in the Lake District.A collection of papers relating to the Sumner family are in the possession of the Cumbria Archive Centre. It includes numerous sketchbooksby several members of the Sumner family including several of the Lake District and also of European subjects.Her sister Maggie Sumner (1859–1919) was a correspondence pupil of John Ruskin and his letters contained detailed instructions aimed at improving her drawing. She was the only female artist to contribute to the first five issues of The Yellow Book, the fashionable magazine edited by Aubrey Beardsley. Her work was very detailed and meticulous in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. One of her sketchbooks, depicting landscapes surrounded by floral borders, has an inscription gifting it to her sister Lily for Christmas 1875 and is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (Karen Taylor, British Women Artists 1780- 1890, 2020, no. 18).

Signed with initials and dated l.r.: 10 December 1859 ED, pencil heightened with white on blue paper23.8 x 17.8 cm.; 9 3/8 x 7 inchesProvenanceArnold Fellows;Bequeathed to Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall until sold by a charitable trust, 2023The artist was born in Worcester and trained there and in Birmingham. He specialised in depictions of country life and his drawings of young girls are delightfully and minutely observed.Arnold Fellows was a pupil at Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall, between 1911 and 1917. He became a master of the school for a brief period, before moving to spend the remainder of his life as a teacher at Chigwell School in Essex. Fellows devoted much of his life to collecting art, notably works on paper, and eventually donated his entire collection to his old school. He was the author of The wayfarer's companion: England's history in her buildings and countryside, published by Oxford University Press, 1937.

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.

Pastel, inscribed on reverse of original backboard: Anna Tonelli/fece in Londra/1796, in the original frame bearing the inscription Anna Tonelli H.D.Hamilton 179626.1 x 22.6 cm.; 10 ¼ x 8 7/8 inchesProvenanceMellors & Kirk, Nottingham, 9-10 June 2011, lot 713 (as of Tonelli by Hugh Douglas Hamilton);Private collection, U.K. until 2022LiteratureN. Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, no. J.722.167Anna Tonelli, née Nistri, was probably trained in Florence, possibly by Giuseppe Piattoli (1743-1823) with whom she collaborated on a portrait of the family of Granduca Pietro Leopoldo, which was engraved in 1785. At some stage before 1785 she married the virtuoso violinist Luigi Tonelli. It seems highly likely that she came across the work of Hugh Douglas Hamilton in Rome.Tonelli met Lord Clive, ‘Clive of India’, while he was travelling in Italy, and he employed her to make pastels of members of his family. From 1794 she taught drawing to his children in London. She exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1794 and 1797, giving her address as 97 Norton Street. The artist travelled with the Clive family to India between 1798 and 1801, moving around southern India with Lady Clive and her daughters. During her time in the subcontinent, she seems to have worked in watercolour or miniature, rather than pastel, and charged twelve to thirty guineas for a miniature. She painted the Rajah of Tanjore and Tipu Sultan on this trip. She returned to Florence in 1801.Tonelli’s work has been confused with that of Hugh Douglas Hamilton, which may account for the inscription on the frame. She is known to have copied his work for Lord Clive, producing portraits in 1790s to add to a series begun by Hamilton. It seems unlikely that Hamilton has any connection with the present work, as he had returned to Ireland by this date.In 1806 the American agent in Paris, Filippo Mazzei, engaged her to bring up his daughter Elisabetta. He provided a description of the family to Thomas Jefferson (letter, 20th July 1806) with a view to their emigrating to the USA, praising the father, a violinist ‘the peer of any other’, the two children (born c.1789–90), and the mother who ‘sings and plays the piano like an expert; knows very well her own language, French, and English; draws and paints with excellent taste; is accomplished in embroidery and all needlework; and knows geography quite well.’ Jefferson’s response highlighted the expense of living in a major city, which may have deterred the family, as by 2 November 1807 they were in Pisa with Mazzei, while by 1809 they seem to have returned to Florence.I am grateful to Neil Jeffares for his biographical information about the artist.

Anna Tonelli (née Nistri) (c. 1763-1846)Portrait of Frances Anderson (née Gosling)(1768-1850),half-length, wearing a white dress and blue headdress, signed on backboard: Anna Tonelli/fe..in Londra/1798, inscribed on backing on reverse: glass taken out and restored 1848 (?). Frances Anderson née Gosling/born 1768 died 1850 at Dorset Gardens/BrightonPastel, framed as an oval in the original frame25.5 x 21 cm.; 10 x 8 ¼ inchesProvenanceBy family descent to Pamela Bruce Clarke(1915-1989);By family descent at The Grange, Wendover,Buckinghamshire, until October 2024LiteratureN. Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, no. J.722.167Portrait of Robert Anderson (1764-1837)half-length, wearing a black coat and with powdered hair, signed on backboard: Anna Tonelli/fece in Londra/1798, inscribed on label attached to backboard: Robert Anderson M.D. Born 1704 died 1837/at Dorset Gardens, Brighton, Restored 1893. W.B.C./Ancestor of Pamela Bruce ClarkePastel, framed as an oval, in the original frame25.5 x 21 cm.; 10 x 8 ¼ inchesFrame size 32 x 28 cm.; 12 ½ x 11 inchesRobert Anderson was a physician in Brighton who married Frances Gosling in 1788. The couple lived in Dorset Gardens, Brighton.Anna Tonelli, née Nistri, was probably trained in Florence, possibly by Giuseppe Piattoli (1743-1823) with whom she collaborated on a portrait of the family of Granduca Pietro Leopoldo, which was engraved in 1785. At some stage before 1785 she married the virtuoso violinist Luigi Tonelli. It seems highly likely that she came across the work of Hugh Douglas Hamilton in Rome. Tonelli met Lord Clive, ‘Clive of India’, while he was travelling in Italy, and he employed her to make pastels of members of his family. From 1794 she taught drawing to his children in London. She exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1794 and 1797, giving her address as 97 Norton Street. The artist travelled with the Clive family to India between 1798 and 1801, moving around southern India with Lady Clive and her daughters. During her time in the subcontinent, she seems to have worked in watercolour or miniature, rather than pastel, and charged twelve to thirty guineas for a miniature. She painted the Rajah of Tanjore and Tipu Sultan on this trip. She returned to Florence in 1801.Tonelli’s work has been confused often with that of Hugh Douglas Hamilton. She is known to have copied his work for Lord Clive, producing portraits in 1790s to add to a series begun by Hamilton. In 1806 the American agent in Paris, Filippo Mazzei, engaged her to bring up his daughter Elisabetta. He provided a description of the family to Thomas Jefferson (letter, 20th July 1806) with a view to them emigrating to the USA, praising the father, a violinist ‘the peer of any other’, the two children (born c.1789–90), and the mother who ‘sings and plays the piano like an expert; knows very well her own language, French, and English; draws and paints with excellent taste; is accomplished in embroidery and all needlework; and knows geography quite well.’ Jefferson’s response highlighted the expense of living in a major city, which may have deterred the family, as by 2 November 1807 they were in Pisa with Mazzei, while by 1809 they seem to have returned to Florence.The Grange, Wendover was owned from 1789 to 1794 by John Barker Church (1748-1818). Barker Church was an English born businessman and the supplier of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He was one of the few American revolutionaries to sit in the English parliament. His brother-in-law was Alexander Hamilton the influential founding father of the United States. Hamilton and Church were not only business partners but also friends having married sisters. Hamilton went on to have a love affair with Church’s wife Angelica Schuyler. She is featured in the popular musical ‘Hamilton’ by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Church is referred to as her ‘wealthy husband’.

Inscribed (recto): T Von Holst, pencil and pen and brown ink, verso: pencil, on laid paper with a partial Strasburg Lily watermark, laid down on a brown sheet numbered 1027.2 x 21.4 cm; 10 3⁄4 x 8 1⁄2 inchesProvenanceJohn Welch Etherington Rolls (1807-1870);By family descent to Lady Shelley Rolls, her sale at Sotheby’s, London,12 June 1959;P. & D. Colnaghi;Private collection U.K. until 2019Von Holst’s drawing of the seated woman, recto, is after a figure in Raphael’s ‘Miraculous Draft of Fishes’; the drawing for the tapestry cartoon is in the Albertina, Vienna. A print was made after the drawing, which von Holst probably copied. The figure of the standing female on the recto is a characteristic Holst pose, derived from Vincenzo Danti’s bronze statue of Venus in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (see Max Browne, The Romantic Art of Theodor von Holst 1810-44, 1994, p.15).The drawing on the verso illustrates a scene inspired by a Gothic novel such as The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, published in 1794. One of the most popular novels of its day, its main character Emily St. Aubert, a virtuous and beautiful young woman, undertakes a series of dramatic adventures; she escapes from captivity at the hands of a cruel villain in a brooding castle to freedom.The brown card inlay on which the present drawing is contained is from the Rolls album, a large leather-bound album which forms the largest-known group of drawings by the artist. The family lived at The Hendre in Monmouthshire, where they also had at least five oils by von Holst. They were also involved with the theatre and opened their own in the grounds.The pencil inscription “T. Von Holst’ appears on almost all the drawings in the album and is effectively its collection mark.

Signed and inscribed verso: Far away in Cloudland/BWSpiers/And when the smoke ascends on high/Then thou behold'st the vanity of worldly stuff/Gone with a puff/thus think, and smoke tobacco-/G.W.-Smoking Spiritualised, watercolour over pencil heightened with gum arabic and touches of white, and further inscribed on original backing: B.W. Spiers Far Away13.5 x 18cm; 5 1/2 x 7 1/8 inchesBenjamin Walter Spiers (1845-1894) was an idiosyncratic painter of studio still lives who lived in London, at 70 Hereford Road in Bayswater, where the current watercolour may have been drawn. He crammed his antiquarian pictures with books, furniture, objects and paintings a number of which reappear in several of his still lifes. He often drew corners of interiors of his favourite antique shops in London’s Wardour Street. The bust and the chair shown in the present work appear in several of his compositions. He was captured here by an artist with the initials G W who has caught him relaxing with a cigarette in his studio. Spiers often penned a verse to accompany a picture, as in the present work.It is amusing seeing the tables turned and the artist drawn as the subject of his own studio interior. Spiers’ extraordinary fidelity in his own painting and his eclectic taste makes him the leading exponent of a particular type of 19th century interior painting. The dealer and scholar Christopher Wood considered him to be ‘one of the most remarkable painters of still-life in English Art’ (see C. Wood, ‘Knicknacks and silly Old Books’, 'Country Life', 10 June 1993, pp. 124-125).Christie’s London had a large group of Spiers work for sale on 14 December 2016. In one of these works 'Worthless old knickknacks and silly old books', based on the poem 'The Cane-Bottom'd Chair' by Thackeray, the same painting of Gainsborough's (lost) 'Cottage Children', which hangs over the fireplace in the present work, can be seen.Spiers was interested in possessions rather than objects of nature and his curiosity for antiquarian objects, books, maps, prints and china is displayed with trompe-l’oeil accuracy in his watercolours. The same objects repeatedly appear which suggests that Spiers owned them.Little is known about Spiers’ life. He lived in London, first at 17 Hereford Street, Bayswater, and then at Longwood in Acol Road, West Hampstead. He is thought to be related to Richard Phené Spiers, the architect, whose brother, Walter Spiers was a curator of the Soane Museum. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1876 to 1891, and 'The Times' Academy notice for 27 June 1881 says of his two exhibited works, ‘We consider these two works to be the gems of the water- colour gallery.’Christie’s London 14 December 2019, lot 80