Miles Edmund Cotman Raby Park, Durham

KT579 Signed l.l.: M E Cotman 1831, watercolour with scratching out and stopping out 29.5 x 36.6 cm.; 11 ¾ x 14 3/8 inches Provenance By family descent to Grahame Cotman (1878-1938); Susan Gay Wiltshire, née Cotman (d.2022) Exhibited Norwich Castle Museum, ‘Exhibition of Norwich School Pictures’, 1927, no. 151 This work was lent to the Norwich Castle Museum exhibition in 1927 by Grahame Cotman and probably depicts shipping off the Norfolk coast. Miles Edmund was John Sell Cotman’s eldest son and his closest collaborator, his work often very similar to that of his father. He is particularly famed for his seascapes in watercolour of which the present work is a fine, exhibited, example. He was born in Norwich and spent his childhood and adolescence in Great Yarmouth, learning from his father. He exhibited with the Norwich Society of Artists from 1823, when the family returned to Norwich, and assisted his father with a drawing school run from the family home. He married Elizabeth Juby in 1842 and they had three children. The family lived in North London in the early 1850s but returned to Norfolk a few years later, where Cotman continued to paint and teach. M.E. Cotman’s work can be found in many public collections including the British Museum and Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery.

KT609 Signed and dated l.l.: M.E. Cotman/June .18th, pencil, in a 19th century burr maple frame 33 x 24.5 cm.; 13 x 9 5/8 inches Provenance Dr Henry Lowe and Judy Lowe (née) Cotman until 2023

Signed l.r.: W. HUNT, watercolour over pencil with scratching out 34 x 24.5 cm.; 13 3/8 x 9 5/8 inches Provenance J.P. Heseltine (1843-1929); Christopher W. Witt, Buckinghamshire; The Bourne Gallery, Surrey; David Pike (1936-2024) Literature J.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. 66 This 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.

Pen and brown ink and wash over traces of pencil on laid paper 12 x 9.7 cm.; 4 ¾ x 3 3/4 inches Framed in a dark wood moulding 31 x 29 cm.; 12 1/4 x 11 1/2 inches Provenance: Dickinson

Inscribed and dated l.r.: Patti 4 July 1847, inscribed: sloping towards x which is a very deep stuffy vegetable dell and with colour notes, numbered 212, pen and brown ink with pencil 20.2 x 44.5 cm.; 8 1/8 x 17 ½ inches, framed size 37 x 60.5 cm.; 14 1/2 x 23 3/4 inches Provenance Mary Ann Streeter (1932-2023), Boston, by descent until 2025 £5500 Lear travelled to Sicily between May 3 and July 15, 1847, with John Joshua Proby, later the 2nd Earl of Carysfort. They were to make two other tours together that year, to Calabria and Naples. Patti is a village in North-Eastern Sicily in the province of Messina between Milazzo and Capo Calvà, which includes the ancient Graeco-Roman village of Tindari with its famous Sanctuary. After graduating from Radcliffe College (Harvard University) with a degree in Fine Arts, Mary Ann Streeter moved to London for a year and started buying Lear watercolours in the late 1950s. She built up a large collection of Lear’s work.

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

Charles Gore (1729-1807) A view of the East front of Arundel Castle, West Sussex, seen from the Bowling Green Inscribed l. r.: Arundel Castle taken from the Platform or/Bowling Green by Charles Gore Esq 1781 and indistinctly inscribed in pencil u. r.: Arundel Castle Sufsex/1781 Watercolour over touches of pencil on laid paper, with a Whatman watermark 19.6 by 49 cm., 7 ¾ by 19 ¼ inches Provenance Iolo Williams (1890-1962); And by descent until sold Sotheby's, London, 13 July 1989, lot 5; Private collection; With Guy Peppiatt Fine Art The bowling green is the name for the square earthworks located, with the fishponds, on the east side of the castle. They were probably made originally to improve the castle’s defences during the Civil War. Used as a bowling green in eighteenth century, as shown in the drawing by Charles Gore, today a rose garden can be found here. The Hon. Charles Gore was the son of a Lincolnshire landowner and educated at Westminster. He married a wealthy heiress of a shipbuilding company and learnt to draw and design ships. Gore travelled extensively in Europe, sketching with the German artist Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807). Gore copied marine oils, completed the unfinished drawings of other artists, and also developed his own style having acquired an expert knowledge of the sea. His interest in classical antiquities led Charles Gore to join Hackert and Richard Payne Knight on their expedition to Sicily from April to June 1777. In 1779 Gore returned to England and became a member of the Dilettanti Society in 1781. He painted a series of panoramic views of Sussex including the current drawing. The family returned to the Continent in 1782 and he settled in Weimar in 1791 with his daughter Eliza. Examples of Gore's work can be found in the British Museum, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Weimar.

Signed l.l.: E. Lear, pencil with watercolour 23 x 17.7 cm.; 9 x 7 inches These charming, quirky drawings are characteristic early works by Lear, dating from the late 1820s or early 1830s when he was establishing himself as an ornithological artist. They relate to a group of drawings which Lear gave to Mrs Godfrey Wentworth, who supported his employment by the Zoological Society in 1831, and whom he credited with launching him as an artist. They are imaginary, fanciful subjects drawn with not a little humour, resembling the stylised watercolours of birds painted on late eighteenth century porcelain. Robert McCracken Peck has made the interesting suggestion that Lear and his sister Ann may have been thinking of approaching ceramics companies with them (see Robert McCracken Peck, The Natural History of Edward Lear, 2016, pp. 27-9). Two surviving family albums from the late 1820s, containing a mixture of similar natural history subjects by Edward Lear and his sisters Ann and Sarah, are in the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University (MS Typ 55.4 and 55.27). Sir Edward Strachey was a man of letters and friend of Lear’s, who wrote an introduction to Nonsense Songs in 1895. He lived at Sutton Court, Chew Magna in Somerset and was a neighbour of Lear’s close friend Chichester Fortescue, the Liberal politician whom Lear first met in Rome in 1845.

Signed and dated l.r.: W. Callow.1833, watercolour over traces of pencil with scratching out Provenance Private collection U.K. until 2026 This fine example of Callow’s work dates from the time he was sharing a studio in Paris with Thomas Shotter Boys at 19 Rue de Bouloi near the Louvre. He visited England during the summer and presumably travelled through Dover.

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