Helen Allingham, RWS A roof at Broadstairs, Kent

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.

Signed with initials and inscribed verso: Library Fairford Park ArB, watercolour over pencil19.2 x 21.3 cmIn the collection of the Sir John Soane’s Museum are Soane’s working drawings showing alternatives for John Raymond-Barker for the library dating from 1789–90 (SM (3) 80/1/66 recto and verso (4) 81/2/98). They comprise three drawings on two sheets and a survey plan by John Sanders, a pupil from 1784 to 1789. Augusta Raymond-Barker, a keen watercolourist, married Colonel Sir Lumsley-Graham, Bt (1828–90). He fought in the Kaffir War of 1853 and the Crimean War.Provenance: Augusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park, Gloucestershire; thence by family descent until 2016

Signed and dated l.r.: SOPHIA BEALE/1869, watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic34.5 x 60 cm; 13 ¾ x 23 ½ inchesProvenanceBrightwell’s, Leominster, 12 January 2004; where purchased byPaddy Docker-Drysdale (1929-2020);By descent until 2022This 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).

Signed l.r.: Louisa Seyffarth, watercolour heightened with white and gum arabic and stopping out24.3 x 33.5 cm.; 9 ¾ x 13 ¼ inchesProvenanceThomas Baring (40 Charles Street, Berkely [sic] Square, London)ExhibitedThe Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1841, no. 266 (12 guineas)Louisa Sharpe, the daughter of William Sharpe, an engraver, was the most talented of four sisters, Eliza, Charlotte and Mary Ann, all of whom became artists. Raised in Birmingham, the sisters were encouraged to travel to France and Germany to visit galleries and were taught engraving. In 1816 the family moved to London.Ellen Clayton, the Victorian chronicler of female artists, mentions the present work by name and records its date as 1841 (see E. Clayton, English Female Artists, 1876, Vol. 1 pp. 379-80.)The artist exhibited over thirty miniature portraits at the Royal Academy from 1817. Louisa developed her practise as a watercolourist and made highly finished costume subjects and domestic scenes such as the present work. Many of her drawings were engraved in popular annuals such as The Keepsake and the Forget-Me-Not Annual and Heath’s Book of Beauty. Her work was engraved by Charles Heath, John Henry Robinson and Francis Engleheart. In 1829 she was elected as a member of the Old Water-Colour Society, where she was to exhibit thirty-eight works.Roget notes that her choice of subjects show a ‘taste for dramatic point, and a search for anecdote of a telling kind as well as a picturesque capacity’, extremely long titles and not a little humour (J.L. Roget, History of the Old Water-Colour Society, vol. II, reprint 1972, pp. 42-3).In 1834 Louisa Sharpe married Professor Woldemar Seyffarth and moved to Dresden. The couple had two daughters, one of whom, Agnes, also became an artist. Her work continued to be exhibited in London until her death. Her husband was the King of Saxony’s Commissioner to the Great Exhibition in 1851.Ellen Clayton describes the Sharpe sisters as ‘among the most remarkable figure painters’ and notes that the Duke of York, George III’s second son, was their first patron. She states that they were ‘among the first to originate the modern bold style of water-colour drawing’ (ibid Vol. 1 pp. 379-80).Anna Bronwell Jameson (1794-1860) the British writer, art historian and feminist who visited Dresden in 1830s wrote of Sharpe’s work in the same breath as that of Elizabeth Sirani and Angelica Kauffman and remarked that it was supremely feminine (see Sketches of Art, Literature and Character, Harper and Brothers, 1834, p. 221).Thomas Baring (1799-1873), the first owner of this watercolour was the son of Sir Thomas Baring (1772-1848) and a partner in Baring’s bank from 1828 and until his death in 1873.

Inscribed on mount: Fairford/Miss Bosanquet, watercolour over traces of pencil19.5 x 30.5 cm; 7 3/4 x 12 1/8 inchesProvenanceAugusta Raymond-Barker, Fairford Park; By family descent until 2016Harriet Bosanquet, (1798-1830) daughter of William Bosanquet, a banker, married John Raymond-Barker of Fairford Park on 6 May 1823. They had two daughters, Augusta b. 1827 and Leonora, b. 1829, presumably the two girls in purple dresses in this watercolour. The drawing is by her sister Charlotte, the girls’ aunt. Charlotte Bosanquet was a talented artist of interiors and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford have an extensive collection of her work. When their father William Bosanquet died in 1840 Charlotte was left unexpectedly impoverished and moved from house to house staying with members of her extended Hugenot family, building up what amounted to a pictorial diary of her movements amongst the many branches of the family, usually depicting the libraries, halls, or drawing rooms of their houses. One of her sketchbooks is entitled ‘The Bosanqueti – a selection of Several Mansion Houses, Villas, Lodges, Parks, etc., the principal residences of a distinguished Family with descriptive notes’ (see Cherry, Deborah. Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists. London: Routledge, 1993, p. 131).Fairford Park was built for Andrew Barker in 1661-2 by Valentine Strong (d.1662 and completed by Strong's eldest son Thomas) and the design is known only from Kip's engraved bird's eye view of about 1710. The house was altered circa 1740 and the grounds circa 1750-60 to Rococo taste.[ ’This almost perfect Restoration composition was however much altered in the C18; the house c. 1740 and the grounds c. 1750-60 to Rococo taste ...' (D.Verey & A. Brooks, Gloucestershire 1: the Cotswolds, 3rd ed., 1999, pp.369-70].Soane remodelled the house for John Raymond Barker in 1789-90. His Journal No. 1, in the Sir John Soane’s Museum, has an entry for 22 May 1789: 'Sanders went to Fairford this Eveng / to take plans of the House / & Offices; retd the 26', other entries follow and finish with 'Received in full April 1791 £227:8:6’. Soane’s changes to this room seem to have been restricted to the chimney piece and the cornice, and the bookcases seen framing the composition of this watercolour. (A drawing for the chimneypiece of the drawing room is in the Sir John Soane's Museum).After use as an American military hospital during the war, the family sold Fairford House in 1945 and the house (not the estate) was eventually bought by Gloucestershire County Council and became the site for Farmor's Comprehensive School.

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 l.l.: H C Coleman Angell., watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of bodycolour and gum arabic23 x 32.3 cm.; 9 x 12 ½ inchesProvenanceJohn Abbott (1937-2011)The artist was anointed as his successor by William Henry Hunt whose enthusiasm for still life subjects she shared. This work can be dated to 1874-1784 as she married and took the name of her husband in 1874. Her later style was looser than her early work.She was the fifth daughter of twelve children of Henrietta Dendy and William Thomas Coleman, a physician and was schooled at home. Along with her sister, the pottery artist Rose Rebecca Coleman, she was taught painting and drawing by her older brother William Coleman who kept an art pottery studio in South Kensington and whom she helped make designs for Minton.Her early watercolours were first exhibited in the Dudley Gallery in London in 1864 thanks to the connections of her brother William.She married Thomas William Angell, a postmaster and an amateur artist, on 15 October 1874. The following year she joined the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours but resigned after she became an A.O.W.S.Angell became Flower Painter in Ordinary to Queen Victoria from 1879 until her death, succeeding Valentine Bartholomew.Her work can be found in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Albert Museum, Exeter and other public collections.

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.l.: Louise Rayner, watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic46.5 x 33 cm.; 18 3/8 x 13 inchesThe artist was born in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, the daughter of Samuel and Ann Rayner who were both professional artists. The most talented of six children, who all worked as artists, Louise studied painting from the age of fifteen, first with her father, and subsequently with George Cattermole, Edward Nieman, David Roberts and Frank Stone.She specialised in watercolour and her streetscapes capture the flavour of city life in 1870s and 1880s and are architecturally detailed.In 1851, when Louise was ten, the family moved to London and, except when travelling, she spent much of her life there. She would often accompany her architect brother Richard on his business trips and paint . As a result, Louise was widely travelled, both in Britain and in northern France. She most enjoyed visiting old cathedral cities and market towns, and is acclaimed for her views of Chester, London, Hastings, Tewksbury, Warwick, Edinburgh, Wrexham, Shrewsbury as well as Salisbury.By 1865 she had moved to Chester where she spent many years working and teaching painting. She lodged at the home of Robert Shearing (who owned a chemist's shop in Watergate Street) and his wife Mary Anne at 2 Ash Grove, in what was then a secluded rural location outside the city.In 1910, she and her sister Margaret, who had lodged with her for a time in Chester, moved to Tunbridge Wells. When Margaret died, in 1920, Louise moved for the last time to Southwater Road, St Leonard's-on-Sea, Sussex, and died there on 8th October 1924, aged 92. She never married.For over half a century, Louise was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, the Old and the New Watercolour Societies, the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street Gallery, the British Institution, the Society of Female Artists, the Dudley Gallery, the Birmingham Society of Artists and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.Her work can be found in many public collections including the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, Derby Museum and Art Gallery and the Salisbury Museum.

Stamped with estate stamp l.l., watercolour and pencil on tan paper, numbered verso in pencil: 67 (twice)16.2 x 12.9 cm.; 6 3/8 x 5 1/8 inchesProvenanceThe Estate of the artist, by descentIn February 1904 Gwen John and Dorelia McNeill left Toulouse for Paris where they took a room in the Hôtel de Mont Blanc at 19 Boulevard Edgar Quinet in the 14th arrondissement. They acquired a female tortoiseshell cat with a white breast which Gwen John named after the street and drew frequently, and which would appear to be the subject of the present drawing which dates from around 1905-1908.Gwen John had many cats throughout her life, and when Edgar Quinet disappeared in 1908 she wrote a poem in her memory entitled Au Chat which she sent to Rodin. Her remarkable cat drawings capture the personality of the animals and are understandably acclaimed.