Hugo Vilfred Pedersen Portrait of a man from Ceylon

Watercolour over traces of pencil on Creswick paper 31 x 48.3 cm.; 12 ¼ x 19 inches Provenance Christie’s, London, the Artist’s sale, 27 May 1850, lot 378; Christie's London, April 25, 1995, 116; Bill Thomson, Albany Gallery until 2021 De Wint first visited Shropshire in 1829-1830 and exhibited a number of Shropshire views throughout his career. He had two major patrons there, Lord Clive at Oakley Park near Ludlow, not far from the Clee Hills, and Edward Cheney of Badger Hall.

Signed l.l.: W Muller/1839., oil on panel 43.5 x 27 cm.; 17 x 10 5/8 inches Provenance Thomas 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 2020 Exhibited Noortman & Brod, 18th and 19th Century Paintings, April – May 1983, New York, June - July 1983, London This 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.

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

Watercolour, with a pencil sketch of a house in a landscape verso, on laid paper 11.2 x 13 cm Provenance: William Arnold Sandby; John Manning, London; Private collection, UK until 2017 William Arnold Sandby (c. 1828-1904) was the great-grandson of Thomas Sandby, author of the first book about the artists, Thomas and Paul Sandby-Royal Academicians, 1892, and the historian of the Royal Academy (two volumes of its history published in 1862). He had a large collection of the work of his forebears, helped organise their first exhibition at Nottingham Castle Museum in 1884 and bequeathed many of their works to museum collections.

Signed l.r.: CF Tunnicliffe, watercolour over pencil with touches of white on cream paper 41 x 55 cm.; 16 1/8 x 21 5/8 inches Provenance The Tryon Gallery; Private collection, UK, sold at Christies South Kensington, London, 3 November 2010, lot 58 The artist was a countryman who was brought up Cheshire. After studying at the Macclesfield School of Art he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London, gaining his teaching diploma and a further scholarship to study in the RCA's new Etching and Engraving School. He worked as a commercial artist and taught art at Manchester Grammar School. Tunnicliffe was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and in 1974 a ‘Members Exhibition’ was held there of his work. He and his wife Winifred moved from Cheshire to Angelsey in 1947 and lived at Shorelands in Malltraeth until his death.

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.71 The drawings are of various sizes, on laid paper, each page 31.5 x 19.7 cm.; 12 1⁄4 x 7 3⁄4 inches Provenance Private collection, U.K.;Private sale by Sotheby’s Australia, January 25 2001; Patrick Dockar-Drysdale (1929-2020) Exhibited Tate Britain, 'Now you See Us- Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920', May - October 2024, ill. p.42, p. 205 Sarah 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.: SOPHIA BEALE/1869, watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic 34.5 x 60 cm; 13 ¾ x 23 ½ inches Provenance Brightwell’s, Leominster, 12 January 2004; where purchased by Paddy Docker-Drysdale (1929-2020); By descent until 2022 This substantial landscape of Heidelberg is a fine example of a detailed Pre-Raphaelite landscape. The skillful use of bodycolour applied with a dry brush creates a pleasing richness which combined with the play of dappled sunlight on the mossy rocks in the foreground and the careful selection of colours elevates the view well above topography. Beale was born in London to Frances, née Smith, and Lionel John Beale, a surgeon. Her sister, Ellen Brooker Beale, was also an artist with whom she collaborated. Sophia and Ellen Beale went to Queen’s College School, London and took art lessons at the popular Leigh’s Academy run by the artist Matthew Leigh. They copied extensively after the Old Masters and antiquities in the National Gallery and British Museum. From 1860 to 1867 the two sisters shared a studio on Long Acre in Covent Garden. In 1869 Sophia Beale travelled in Germany and France, when the present work was drawn, and in 1872 she returned to Paris, where she took classes run for women at Charles Joshua Chaplin’s (1825-1891) studio (where Mary Cassatt also studied), financing her studies by working at M. Bertin’s studio. On her return to London, Beale used the money she had earned in Paris to open an art school in Albany Street, near Regent’s Park, teaching the latest Parisian techniques. Beale was a feminist and in 1889 among the two thousand signatories to the ‘Declaration in Favour of Women's Suffrage’ formulated by the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage. Beale also advocated for the Royal Academy and the universities to allow greater access for women. The artist exhibited extensively during her lifetime at the Society of British Artists in Sussex Street, where she showed around thirty works, while she also had four works accepted by the Royal Academy between 1863 and 1887. Between 1868 and 1882 she exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy and with the Society of Women Artists from 1860 to 1881. She published four books, A guide to the Louvre (1883), The Amateur’s Guide to Architecture (1887), The Churches of Paris from Clovis to Charles X (1893) and her autobiography, Recollections of a Spinster Aunt (1908). She also wrote articles including a review of the 1894 exhibition ‘Fair Women’ at the Grafton Gallery in London for The American Architect and Building News (1876-1908), Boston 45, no. 975 (see Meaghan Clark, Fashionability, Exhibition Culture and Gender Politics: Fair Women, 2021, p. 21).

Inscribed l.r.: Bruges, watercolour 7.6 x 11.4 cm; 3 x 4½ inches Provenance Spink & 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.

Two, bodycolour, one on paper watermarked: SMITH & ALLNUTT 1815 Each 20.5 x 33.5 cm Provenance: Mrs Baldock The artists of the Patna School specialised in the depiction of everyday activities for their British patrons. Traditionally described as the work of the Company School (reflecting the patronage of the East India Company employees) this unique genre evolved as the painting styles of Western and Mughal traditions merged.