ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM

38. SOUTHERN FRANCE ARTIST.

King David in Prayer.

Arched miniature on vellum depicting King David kneeling in prayer, 91 x 65mm., set in elaborate hand painted illuminated border on three sides; 4-line illuminated initial D (of “Domine” - O Lord), eight lines of gothic text on the other side; mounted. Southern France, circa 1475.

A superb late fifteenth-century miniature of King David from a fifteenth century French Book of Hours. The image of David, with his harp, kneeling in prayer, introduces the opening of the Seven Penitential Psalms, of which King David was traditionally identified as the author. The quality of the miniature is very fine; the king’s face, drapery and the naturalistic landscape in which he kneels are all delicately rendered. The intense colours, differentiated landscape, and the elaborate border decoration of acanthus and gold leaves and flowers on swirling hairline stems all point to an artist in southern France.

The group of Seven Penitential Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143) is particularly expressive of sorrow and repentance for sin, and was first given the name by Saint Augustine of Hippo: the title was originally only associated with the fifty-first psalm, ‘Miserere’, the psalm which was conventionally used to close daily morning service.

King David also appears here as a model of penitence: after his commission of the dual crimes of adultery, with Bathsheba, and the murder of her husband Uriah, by sending him to be killed in battle, David was rebuked by the prophet Nathan and reprimanded by God. He repented and withdrew to live in exile, devoting himself to prayer.

The miniature dates from the end of the fifteenth century, and is a reminder that even after the invention of moveable print and the Gutenberg revolution, the older tradition of manuscript transmission was still the dominant medium of the period, and that the traditions of artistry associated with the illumination of manuscripts were still of the highest quality.

$3850 [3108951 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

STRUTT’S LION: “NOBILITY AND STRENGTH”

39. STRUTT, William.

Drawing of a lion…

Original drawing, 170 x 100 mm, graphite and sepia on card; signed lower left William Strutt; mounted and framed. Paris, at the Jardin des Plantes, 1895.

William Strutt (1825-1915) was born in Devon, England in 1825. For a period of his younger life he lived in France, returning there in the late 1830s to study painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, spending much time in the Louvre with the works of Raphael, which would remain a lifetime influence. In 1850 he sailed to Melbourne where he became a founder of the Fine Arts Society (later renamed the Victorian Society of Fine Arts) and exhibited at the Melbourne Exhibition in 1854.

Strutt excelled as an animal painter. On his return to England in 1862, and influenced by the PreRaphaelites, he came to “regard the lion as the greatest symbol of nobility and strength” (Marjorie J. Tipping, in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, online resource). So entranced was he with wild animals that he travelled to North Africa to study them in their native habitat.

This is a delightful group of drawings which together form a study of a lion at the Jardin des Plantes, the famous zoo in the centre of Paris. Captioned “Jardin des Plantes”, it bears several inscriptions including the dates of “Paris May 23rd 1895” and “zoo August 7th/ 95”. To the left he writes under the lion’s face “cast of whiskers depressed” and to the right “the eyeball nearly melts away… in the light”. Strutt’s close and intimate study of several aspects of this lion demonstrates his outstanding skills as both a draughtsman and a superb animal artist. Strutt exhibited 23 times at the Royal Academy and was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists.

Provenance: Private collection (New South Wales).

$3400 [5000823 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

PRESENTED TO AUSTRALIA’S FIRST JEWISH EDUCATOR

40. SYDNEY JEWISH SABBATH SCHOOL. COHEN, Maurice Abraham.

Gold “Vesta” matchbox inscribed “A souvenir from the Sydney Jewish Sabbath School, 1905”… 9 carat gold matchbox, 15 gr; 45 x 30 mm; monogrammed on the back with interwoven letters “M.A.C.”. Sydney, 1905.

A remarkable memento of the pioneer Jewish educator Maurice (Moses) Abraham Cohen (18511923). Objects from the Australian Jewish community at the start of the 20th century (prior to the great waves of Jewish immigration) are very scarce. The monogrammed initials on this attractive presentation piece identify it as a gift from the Sydney Jewish Sabbath School to M.A. Cohen, the School’s first principal.

Born in Ukraine to a Sephardic family, Cohen was a talented linguist. Educated in England, after spells in India and Afghanistan he travelled to Australia in 1887 where he took up a role as the first headmaster of the Jewish Sunday School, just then established in Sydney within the Great Synagogue, Australia’s finest synagogue. He went on to become head of the NSW Jewish Board of Education. At one time he was editor of Sydney’s first Jewish weekly newspaper the Australian Jewish Weekly, as well as a lecturer on Hebrew at a number of theological colleges in Australia.

Cohen was one of the first European Australians to call attention to the plight of the Australian Aborigines and argue for compensation and land rights, even risking his position as editor of the Australian Hebrew Newspaper with his fiery opinion pieces on the subject. He also argued for increased non-discriminatory immigration drawing from all cultures and vehemently opposed the White Australia Policy. (The Australian Jewish Historical Society, “The First Jewish Educator for Sydney”: online resource).

So-called “Vesta” cases, named for the Roman goddess of fire and the hearth, are small portable boxes made to contain matches and keep them dry. More commonly made of tin or sometimes enamel or silver, with later examples sometimes carrying advertising or being highly decorated, gold examples from this period represent a high standard and were very suitable for presentation pieces; this fine example was perhaps made to join a pocket watch on its gold chain.

$6775 [5000696 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

41. WALLACE, Alfred Russel.

On the Phenomena of Variation and Geographical Distribution as Illustrated by the Papilionidae of the Malayan Region…

Quarto, 72 pp., with eight lithographic plates by Day and Son after J.O. Westwood; uncut and unopened, in later plain wrappers. London, Longman, Green, et al., 1865.

The rare first printing of one of Alfred Russel Wallace’s most significant papers: his important text on butterfly variation on the Malay Peninsula, illustrated with eight full-page lithographic plates. Of this paper Darwin wrote, “I cannot conceive that the most firm believer in species could read it without being staggered. Such papers will make many more converts among naturalists than long-winded books such as I shall write if I have the strength” (Epsilon WCP1868).

In this paper, read before the Linnean Society of London on 17 March 1864, Wallace presented detailed evidence of evolution occurring in nature. It contained some of his most important early observations and conclusions concerning mimicry, polymorphism, and protective colouration. One of Wallace’s most frequently cited works, it was based on data collected during his research on the Malay Peninsula from 1854-62, during which he devised his own theory of natural selection independent of Darwin, later published in his Malay Archipelago (1869). Wallace’s Malay research “alone would have established him as one of the greatest English naturalists of the age” (DSB).

We have traced just two copies of this rare offprint sold at auction in modern times.

$4850 [5000874 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at