Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming The Rock of Gibraltar and the Sierra Nevada

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Cave on the Island/of Elephanta/Dec 9th. 69 and further signed by another, watercolour over pencil. The artist visited the famous Hindu temple carved into the rockface on the island of Elephanta. Constructed between the fifth and sixth century, the temple is part of the ‘City of Caves’ devoted to the cult of Shiva. For further work by this artist please see the catalogue link and enquire about availability.

Signed, inscribed and dated l.r.: Ruins of the Temple at the furthest/point of Dondra Head. Southernmost point/of Ceylon. CFGC./Nov 7th/1873, and signed by Isabel Lloyd Hill, H Lloyd Hill, Edward Elliott, Mary Emily Elliott, and various others, numbered l.l.: 138A. watercolour and pencil 35.5 x 50.5 cm.; 14 x 19 ¾ inches This was one of many beautiful sunsets witnessed by the artist in Ceylon. Dondra is on Sri Lanka’s south coast, east of Matara.

Inscribed and dated l.l.: Ponte Nomentano. June 21st. Rome, watercolour over pencil, stamped with Michael Ingram’s collector’s mark on old mount 12.5 x 17.5 cm.; 4 7/8 x 6 7/8 inches, framed size 27 x 32 cm.; 10 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches Provenance Bought in Bath by Michael Ingram, his sale at Sotheby’s 8 December 2005, lot 236, where bought for a princely collection in the Middle East until December 2024 Roberts visited Rome and Naples in 1853. He greatly enjoyed Rome and produced many drawings and oil paintings as a result of his stay. The bridge was erected at the point where the via Nomentana crossed the Aniene river, a tributary of the Tiber, at the foot of Monte Sacro. Roberts drew the large travertine arch and the medieval crenelated fortification. Restored several times over the centuries, it was much painted by visiting artists. Michael Ingram inherited his passion for collecting drawings from his uncle Sir Bruce Ingram, OBE, MC (1877-1963, L. 1405a) and modelled his collector’s mark on that of his uncle.

Pencil on laid paper, partially watermarked and countermarked 1819 14.5 x 10.9 cm.; 5 ¾ x 4 ¼ inches Provenance: Cyril and Shirley Fry until 2021 Literature: J. Witt, 'William Henry Hunt (1790-1864)', 1982, no. 369 Exhibited: 'Hunt Exhibition Fry Collection', 1967, no. 17 (2) This work dates from c. 1820.

KT523 Pen and grey ink and watercolour over pencil on laid paper watermarked J WHATMAN, inscribed verso in pencil: Inscribed on old mount/near Chepstow/William Day 30x 39 cm.; 11 ¾ x 15 3/8 inches Provenance Cyril Fry This exceptionally fresh drawing is a lovely example of the work of William Day, an accomplished amateur artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1782 and 1801 as an Honorary Exhibitor. The late Judy Egerton wrote an article about him in The Connoisseur, July 1970, pp. 176-185. It is not known for certain when Day met John Webber, the Swiss-born artist who is famous for accompanying Captain Cook on his last expedition to the South Seas between 1776 and 1780. The Connoisseur article notes, without giving a source, that the friendship between the two artists “began about 1787”. Day and Webber were sketching together in the Wye valley in 1788, which is the first time that pairs of views by the two artists of the same subject are known to exist. Two watercolours by Webber of Chepstow Castle dated 1788, which are now in the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester (D.1900.12 & D.1970.77) (see Charles Nugent, British Watercolours in the Whitworth Art Gallery, 2003, p. 282) correspond to two watercolours by Day which were acquired by Chepstow Museum in 2012. A family note lists Day’s interest in the following order:’ Geology, Minerology and Painting’ and he formed one of the earliest private collections of minerals in England. His collection was carried on by his son William Day (1797-1849) and his grandson and passed to the Hampstead Central Library where it was destroyed by bombing during WWII.

Head and shoulders, pen and brown ink and wash 22.9 x 17.3 cm; 9 x 10 3/4 inches Provenance: Private collection, UK, bought at a charity auction at the Finchingfield Guildhall Landseer’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.

Pencil and black and red chalk, in original frame 42 x 34.5 cm.; 16 ½ x 13 5/8 inches Provenance: With Dorothy Roberts, Lincoln, 1996; Acquired by the previous owner in May 1996 from Douglas Turner; Private collection U.K. until 2021 Literature: Kenneth Garlick, ‘A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Pastels of Sir Thomas Lawrence’ in The Walpole Society; 1962–64, xxxix, 1964, p. 244 This 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, Woodlands https://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/fhx055 See 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).

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.

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'.

Inscribed and dated l.l.: Monte Generoso/1879, and further inscribed with colour notes, pen and brown ink over pencil 25 x 51.5 cm; 9 7/8 x 20 1/4 inches £8500 Lear returned to Varese and Monte Generoso, on the border between Italy and Switzerland between lakes Lugano and Como, from June 29 to September 22 1879. He stayed at Mendrisio, across the Swiss border in Ticino. He enjoyed sketching the views south across the plains, as in the present watercolour and the mountains stretching up to the Alps. Marianne North the botanical artist came to Como towards the end of his stay and they made a trip to Monte Civita near Monza together. This drawing is taken from a similar vantage point to that of an oil of the same subject dated 1880 in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum (WA196.39). An unpublished poem “The Lays of the Octopods’ about the perils of mass tourism at Monte Generoso has recently come to light in the British Library.