Miles Edmund Cotman Raby Park, Durham

KT579Signed l.l.: M E Cotman 1831, watercolour with scratching out and stopping out29.5 x 36.6 cm.; 11 ¾ x 14 3/8 inchesProvenanceBy family descent to Grahame Cotman (1878-1938);Susan Gay Wiltshire, née Cotman (d.2022)ExhibitedNorwich Castle Museum, ‘Exhibition of Norwich School Pictures’, 1927, no. 151This 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.

KT609Signed and dated l.l.: M.E. Cotman/June .18th, pencil, in a 19th century burr maple frame33 x 24.5 cm.; 13 x 9 5/8 inchesProvenanceDr Henry Lowe and Judy Lowe (née) Cotman until 2023

Pen and brown ink and wash over traces of pencil on laid paper12 x 9.7 cm.; 4 ¾ x 3 3/4 inchesFramed in a dark wood moulding31 x 29 cm.; 12 1/4 x 11 1/2 inchesProvenance: Dickinson

KT635Signed with monogram, inscribe and dated in pencil l.l.: TRAETH MAWR/Sept 27th 55, watercolour over pencil heightened with white on buff paper33.7 x 51.8 cm.; 13 3/8 x 20 3/8 inchesFrame size 50 x 67 cm.; 19 5/8 x 26 3/8 inchesProvenanceAgnew’s, (DB5417)Private collection, Herefordshire, until 2024James Holland OWS was born in Burslem, Staffordshire, where his father and other members of his family (including his brother Thomas, also an artist) were employed at the pottery works of William Davenport in Longport. James was employed there from the age of twelve, for seven years, painting flowers on pottery and porcelain.In 1819, Holland came to London where he continued to work as a pottery painter, but also gave lessons in drawing landscapes, architecture, and marine subjects. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824, became an associate exhibitor of The Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1835 and joined the Society of British Artists in 1843. In 1858 he was elected a full member of the Old Water Colour Society.Holland travelled extensively on the Continent between the 1830s and the 1850s, and he became known for his topographical works which were reproduced in the illustrated travel annuals of the day. He visited Venice, Milan, Geneva, and Paris, Portugal, Normandy and made tours of North Wales in 1850 and 1855.He exhibited prolifically during his lifetime and showed thirty-two pictures at the Royal Academy, ninety-one at the British Institution, and 108 at the Society of British Artists.

Inscribed l.l.: TRENANT SIR E. BULLERS., pen and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil14 x 23.3 cm; 5 ½ x 9 1/8 inchesProvenanceJ.A.D. Bridger, his sale at Sotheby’s London, 24 January 1951, lot 150; bought by Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd.; H.M. Langton; Spink & Son Ltd., K3/1993;Exhibited Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., 80th Annual Exhibition of Water-colour Drawings (January – March 1953), no. 85Rowlandson worked extensively in the West Country early in his career and made annual tours. He usually stayed with his friend and patron Matthew Michell, a banker, who had an estate at Hengar near Bodmin in Cornwall.Sir Edward Buller, 1st Baronet (24 December 1764 – 15 April 1824) was an officer in the Royal Navy who served during the American War of Independence, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was MP for East Looe in Cornwall from 1802-1820. He lived at Trenant Park in East Cornwall.

Signed with initials l.r.: HBB, watercolour and bodycolour over pencil, inscribed verso: Siracuse and stamped with collector’s markProvenanceGilbert Davis (L. 757a.);Edward Seago, his estate sale at Christie’s, London 1 March 1977, lot 94;Where bought by B.M. Williams;Christie’s, London, 21 November 2007, lot 145, where acquired by the previous owner until 2025 Gilbert Davis (1899–1983) built up a large collection of watercolours in the middle of the twentieth century. He sold the bulk of his collection in 1959 to the Huntingdon Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. Edward Seago RBA, RWS (1910-1974) was one of the most popular British artists of 20th century, who painted in oils and watercolours.

Signed and dated lower left: J. Severn Roma 1825Oil on canvas61.6 by 75cm., 24 1/4 by 39 1/2 inches, framed size 82 x 90 cm.; 32 1/4 x 35 3/8 inches£22,000This unpublished painting depicts the wife and child of a brigand apparently hiding from the authorities, probably in the Alban Hills. The sleeping man, his rifle at his side, is watched over by his wife who rocks their child in a makeshift cradle covered by a cloth and hanging from a tree branch. Banditti were a popular artistic subject, made fashionable by the work of Salvator Rosa, and Severn experienced an attempted robbery first hand in 1823 when he was travelling around Naples, where brigands were common. Here he focusses on the humanity of the mother and draws attention to the precarious condition of the family.Joseph Severn was the eldest son of a music teacher from Hoxton. At the age of 14 he became apprenticed to the engraver William Bond before entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1815. Here, in 1820, he was awarded the gold medal for historical painting for his Una and the Red Cross Knight in the Cave of Despair, which granted him a travelling scholarship. This coincided with the illness of his friend, the poet John Keats, and together they travelled to Rome in search of a better climate for the ailing poet. During the winter of 1820-21 Severn nursed Keats in their apartment near the Spanish Steps, his detailed letters from the period of great importance, but, on 23 February 1821, Keats died.Severn remained in Rome, launching his own artistic career as a painter of landscapes, portraits and subject paintings. His pictures of Italian peasant life won him such an avid following that there were times during the 1820s when he could not keep up with the flood of commissions. At the beginning of 1827 he wrote to his younger brother Charles that he had “now 9 pictures on order”, and by the beginning of the following year he had “eleven pictures on hand” and this popularity continued well into the 1830s. Patrons, friends, family and fellow artists all praised the freshness and originality of his Italian painting. Sir Charles Eastlake wrote of the “richness of colour” and the "truth of circumstance, situation, incident & costume," of Severn’s Italian work (Charles Eastlake to Severn, 7 May 1834 and May 1832 (MS: Harvard, bMS Eng 1434 [52, 51], quoted in Grant F. Scott, Joseph Severn Letters and Memoirs, 2005, p. 23). It seems probable that the present work was a commission.Severn exhibited extensively at the Royal Academy during the late 1820s and 1830s showing eleven paintings of which ten were Italian genre pictures. Today comparable paintings from this period can be found in the Thorvaldens Museum in Denmark, Italian woman and her Daughter, 1831 and Italian Peasant in The Royal Collection, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The Fountain of 1828 has a similar landscape background to the present work and hangs in the Royal Palace, Brussels. The Vintage, was commissioned by the Duke of Bedford in 1825 for Woburn Abbey. Further work is in the collections of the Tate Gallery, London and the Victoria and Albert Museum.Severn played a crucial role in the foundation of the British Academy of the Fine Arts at Rome (1823-1936), securing funding from various influential patrons including William Hamilton, the antiquarian, and hosting evening gatherings in his apartment on the Via di San Isodoro, where artists met to study and draw from life, and where they had access to casts, painting and sculpting material and books. It was also a temporary rooming house where artists who had recently arrived from England could stay while looking for a studio (see, Grant F. Scott, op. cit., p.17).Severn remained in Rome for most of his life other than a spell in England from 1841-1861. With the help of William Gladstone, an avid patron, he became British Consul in Rome from 1860-72. He died in Rome in 1879 and, at his request, was buried next to Keats in the Protestant cemetery near Porta San Paolo and adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius. Their graves are pictured below.

Signed with initials l.l.: TC, oil on paper laid down on canvas26.5 x 36 cm.; 10 3/8 x 14 1/8 inchesThe artist studied in Birmingham under Joseph V. Barber (1788-1838) and moved to London in 1828. He was one of the leading practitioners of the Birmingham School of Artists and a founder member of the Etching Club. Creswick exhibited over 250 paintings in London during his lifetime at the Royal Academy and Suffolk Street Galleries, and also worked as an illustrator. He sought out subjects from the rivers and streams all over the British Isles.The present work has a pleasing spontaneity and sense of place which reflects Creswick’s habit of painting outside from nature. He was particularly drawn to streams which he painted many times. He revels in depicting the colours, shapes and textures of the boulders in the foreground of this work and excels himself conveying the softness of the moss on the first rock. John Ruskin praised Creswick’s handling of foliage and his observations from nature in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843). Oils on paper by him are comparatively rare.Creswick’s work is represented in many British institutional collections and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

Pen and brown ink and watercolour, inscribed with pencil numbers l.r.4 x 11.6 cm.; 1 5/8 x 4 5/8 inchesLear’s diary of 5th May 1864 records that he was sketching at the Lake of Kourna, ‘very fine and Cumberlandish- in a nook at the foot of very high hills…11.15 Lunch is done: the wrens and titmice still sing-still. Zeriff [Turkish armed servant] hubblebubbles. The four Cretan creturs [sic] sleep, and the sun comes over the oak tree I lie beneath so I must move. Very delightful hours…’

Cecil Arthur Hunt, RWS (1873-1965)Mount Etna, SicilySigned in pencil l.l.: C.A. Hunt, watercolour, inscribed on label attached to backboard: From Cecil & Phyllis Hunt/Christmas 1954/Etna9 x 13,5 cm.; 3 ½ x 5 5/8 inchesFrame size 15 x 29 cm.; 6 x 11 3/8 inchesProvenanceAgnew’s;Private collection UKHunt and his wife, Phyllis made many trips to Sicily, an island which inspired the artist. They always stayed at the Casa Cuseni, the villa in Taormina belonging to his friend and art critic, R. H. Kitson, the painter and critic, who he first met at Cambridge. Casa Cuseni is now a museum and is, perhaps, best known for its dining room designed by Sir Frank Brangwyn (1867 – 1956).