British Drawings and Watercolours - Master Drawings

BRITISH DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS

MASTER DRAWINGS

NEW YORK

FEBRUARY 2025

GUY PEPPIATT FINE ART

BRITISH DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS MASTER DRAWINGS

NEW YORK FEBRUARY 2025

EXHIBITING AT THE ARADER GALLERIES, 1016 MADISON AVE

BETWEEN 78TH AND 79TH ST

Guy Peppiatt Fine Art Ltd

Riverwide House, 6 Mason’s Yard Duke Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6BU

Tel: +44 (0) 7956 968 284 guy@peppiattfineart.co.uk www.peppiattfineart.co.uk

Front Cover: (22) William Callow, R.W.S. (1812-1908)

The Rialto Bridge, Venice

Opposite: (44) James Thomas Watts (1852-1930)

Sunny April morning in Bettws-y-Coed woods

Rear Cover: (58) John Singer Sargent, R.A. (1856-1925) Venice – Steps of a Palace

Isaac

Oliver (circa 1565-1617)

Adoration of the Shepherds

Signed with monogram lower right: IO inven.t and inscribed with a P upper left Pen and brown ink and grey washes heightened with white on laid paper 12.1 by 15.4 cm., 4 ¾ by 6 in.

Provenance:

Richard Ramsey Bond (1826-1891) of 51 Seymour Street, London; Mrs A.S. Mann; With Manning Gallery, London, where bought 27th April 1972; By descent to the present owner

Isaac Oliver was born in Rouen the son of a Huguenot goldsmith Pierre Olivier in circa 1565. His father had fled from Rouen to Geneva in 1557 to escape persecution and having returned for a few years, travelled to London with the young Isaac in 1568. When Isaac reached the appropriate age he entered the studio of the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619) who Pierre Olivier probably met in Geneva.

Isaac Oliver’s earliest known miniature is dated 1587 and he quickly made a name for himself with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565-1601) an early patron. In 1596 Oliver appears to have visited Italy, as an inscription on a portrait in the Victoria and Albert Museum (P.4-1917) states it was made in Venice. The influence of Italian art is evident in Oliver’s ink and wash drawings such as the present work. Related drawings, ‘Antiope’ and ‘The Entombment’ are in the British Museum and there are six ink drawings by Oliver in the Yale Center for British Art.

On his return from Italy, Oliver was appointed personal limner to the Queen, Anne of Denmark in June 1605 while Hilliard continued to find favour with King James I. He also found another royal patron in the heir to the throne fourteen year old Henry, Prince of Wales who died aged eighteen.

On his death, Oliver’s work was left to his son Peter Oliver (1589-1647) who was also an artist. Peter was the son of his first wife Elizabeth. After her death he married Sara Gheeraerts, the half-sister of the artist Marcus Gheeraerts (1561/2-1636) who died in 1605 and thirdly Elizabeth Harding the daughter of a court flautist.

Susannah-Penelope Rosse (c.1655-1700)

Portrait of “Miss Kirke”, later Countess of Oxford (d. 1719)

Black chalks on paper prepared with a pink wash 15.4 by 11.6 cm., 6 by 4 ½ in.

Provenance:

Probably Michael Rosse (d. circa 1735), the artist’s husband; Probably his sale, London, Cecil Street, April-May 1723, unknown lot number;

Possibly (according to family tradition) Christopher Tower of Huntsmoor Park, Buckinghamshire (1657-1728); Possibly by descent to the Rev. William Tower of Weald Hall, Essex (1789-1847);

Mrs William Henry Harford, née Ellen Tower (1832-1907); Hugh Wyndham Luttrell Harford (1862-1920); Arthur Hugh Harford (1905-1985)

The daughter of Richard Gibson (c.1605-1690), SusannahPenelope Rosse was a successful miniaturist in her own right, demonstrated here in this delicate portrait. She is assumed to have spent most of her life in London, even while her parents moved to The Hague to follow Princess Mary in her marriage to William of Orange. Rosse is known for a selection of works within a notebook in the Victoria and Albert Museum, all of which were originally attributed to Samuel Cooper. Re-attributions to Rosse are not an uncommon occurrence, in fact the present miniature had also previously been attributed to Cooper, but this was changed by Daphne Foskett in 1974 (D. Foskett, London, 1974, Samuel Cooper, 1609-1672, p.85).

The sitter, ‘Miss Kirk’, has traditionally been identified as Diana Kirk, who would later marry Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford (1627-1703) and become the Countess of Oxford. Other portraits of Diana exist, including one by Lely (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven B1981.25.756).

However, if this is indeed the sitter in the present portrait, she is pictured here at a much younger age, before becoming a countess. The present portrait relates to a more complete version, again, attributed to Cooper, but sold as by Rosse in 1983 (Christie’s, 13th December 1983, lot 85).

3

Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740–1808)

Portrait of Amelia and Harriet Harding-Newman of Nelmes, Essex at their Music Lesson

Inscribed on an old label attached to the backboard: Amelia and Harriet HardingNewman … Grandaughter of Richard Harding and on backboard: H D Hamilton RHA Pastel on paper

Oval 44 by 49 cm., 17 ½ by 19 ½ in.

Provenance:

Dr W.R. Schweizer:

Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, 4th November 1964, lot 44;

By descent to the present owner

Amelia (1784-1864) on the left, and Harriett (1782-1837) were the children of Richard Harding (1757-1808) and Harriett Schutz (1759-1791) who married at St. James’s Piccadilly in 1776. Their father was the sitter in George Romney’s Pink Boy which was sold at Christie’s in 2014 who had inherited the Manor of Romford, Essex in 1766 from his maternal grandfather, Richard Newman. As Harding he acquired Nelmes in 1781 and took the Newman surname in 1783 by Act of Parliament to become Richard Harding Newman. The family lived at Nelmes Manor, Hornchurch, Essex. Neither Amelia nor Harriett ever married. This portrait dates from the mid 1790s after Hamilton’s return from Rome.

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827)

Fashions at Venice

Pen and grey ink and watercolour over pencil 14.6 by 23.5 cm., 5 ¾ by 9 ¼ in.

Provenance: With Richard Green and Frank T. Sabin, London, where bought by the present owner, 1980

Literature: John Hayes, Rowlandson Watercolours and Drawings, 1972, p.16; Richard Green and Frank T. Sabin, Thomas Rowlandson, 1980, p.20, no.37, ill.

Exhibited: London, Richard Green and Frank T. Sabin, Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827)Exhibition of Watercolours and Prints, 7th November to 6th December 1980, no.37

5

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827)

The Connoisseurs – Englishmen

viewing Pictures on the Grand Tour

Signed lower left: Rowlandson. 1790

Pen and grey ink and watercolour over pencil on laid paper

21.5 by 19 cm., 8 ½ by 7 ½ in.

Provenance:

With Richard Green and Frank T. Sabin, London, where bought by the present owner, circa 1980

Born in London, Pars began his working career as a portait painter until in 1764 he was appointed draughtsman on a expedition to Greece and Asia Minor organised by Chandler and Revett on behalf of the Society of Dilettanti. Many of the resulting watercolours were engraved for the Society’s publication Ionian Antiquities and are now in the British Museum.

Pars was one of the earliest landscape artists in watercolour. Anne Lyles described him as ‘one of the most sophisticated and accomplished topographers of his age’. He found ‘a profound inspiration in travel, and the best of his work reveals a degree of expressiveness rarely encountered in the more literal topographical drawings of his contemporaries’ (Anne Lyles and Robin Hamlyn, British Watercolours from the Oppé Collection, 1997, p.128). Pars spent the last seven years of his life in Rome where he died as the result of a chill caught while sketching aged only 40.

William Pars, A.R.A. (1742-1782)

Gersau on the Lake of Lucerne, Switzerland

Pen and grey ink and watercolour heightened with touches of bodycolour on laid paper 24.8 by 33 cm., 9 ¾ by 13 in.

Provenance: With Spink & Son (K311168); Private collection until 2024

The present watercolour originates from a three month trip in the summer of 1770 in the company of Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston. They travelled through Switzerland to Lake Maggiore and then back along the Rhine valley. Palmerston kept a journal so we know their itinerary. They reached Lucerne on 11th August and on the 13th they hired an ‘awkward ill-contrived boat’ to travel around the lake. They stopped at Gersau, a village on the southern slopes of the Rigi near the town of Brunnen (see Andrew Wilton, William Pars, Journey through the Alps, 1979, p.22).

There are two other known versions of this watercolour; one, from the Brandt collection was sold at Sotheby’s on 3rd July 2024, lot 56 and another was in the collection of the Earls of Yarborough.

7

Anthony Devis (1729-1817)

The Falls at Tivoli, Italy

Pen and black ink, black chalk and watercolour heightened with white on original washline mount With collector’s mark on mount lower right 52 by 38.7 cm., 20 ½ by 15 ¼ in.

Provenance: With Colnaghi, London, 1972, bt. Ingram; Michael Ingram (1917-2005); Private Collection, UK

Exhibited: London, Colnaghi, Summer Exhibition 1972, no.87

Devis was born in Preston, Lancashire, the younger halfbrother of the portrait painter Arthur Devis (1712-1787). He exhibited between 1761 and 1781 but then retired to Albury House near Guildford where he lived until his death. Huon Mallalieu suggests he may have visited Italy with William Assheton of Cuerdale Hall in 1783-4 (Huon Mallalieu, The Dictionary of Watercolour Artists up to 1920, vol. I, p.211).

Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)

Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland

Signed lower left: T. Girtin 1797 and inscribed on reverse of backing: Bamborough Castle/Northumberland

Watercolour over traces of pencil heightened with bodycolour on laid paper 41.7 by 54.7 cm., 16 ¼ by 21 ½ in.

Provenance:

George Selby (1724-1804) of Twizell House, Adderstone near Bamburgh, Northumberland;

By descent to Sir Geoffrey Selby Church, 2nd Bt. (1887-1979) of Woodside Place, Hertfordshire, his Executors’ sale, Sotheby’s, 13th March 1980, lot 137, where bought by the father of the present owners

Literature:

Randall Davis, ‘Thomas Girtin’s Watercolours’, The Studio, 1924, p.21, ill. pl.76; Thomas Girtin and David Loshak, The Art of Thomas Girtin, 1954, no.192, ill. fig.34; David Hill, Thomas Girtin - Genius in the North, 1999, p.8; Huon Mallalieu, The Dictionary of Watercolour Artists up to 1920, 2002, p.270, ill.

Exhibited:

London, Thos. Agnew & Sons, Loan Exhibition, 1931, no.132; London, Thos. Agnew & Sons, Loan Exhibition of Water-colour Drawings by Thomas Girtin, 1953, no.15; Beijing, China Art Gallery, Shenyang Art Gallery, Hong Kong Museum of Art and Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, British Watercolours and Drawings from Rowlandson to Riley, British Council exhibition, 11th March to 11th November 1982, no.27

This important watercolour, in excellent condition, is based on sketches drawn on Girtin’s first major independent tour, to the north of England and southern Scotland, in the summer of 1796. Dated 1797, tradition in the Church family records that this watercolour was commissioned by George Selby (1724-1804) of Twizell House, Adderstone near Bamburgh, where Girtin is reported to have stayed on his 1796 tour. This watercolour was inherited by Sir Geoffrey Church (1887-1979) and remained in the Church family until 1980. It has been in a private collection since then.

By 1797, Girtin had reached full maturity as an artist. His early works were often architectural watercolours sometimes based on the amateur works of his patrons but he was now financially independent and able to travel and choose his own subjects. Many of his finished works from his 1796 tour are still of buildings however,

particularly views of cathedrals and castles. Here he contrasts the vast imposing castle with the country folk in their simple cottage. He paints an idyllic view of their life, surrounded by their animals, which was far from the reality for most poor families at the period.

Bamburgh is one of a series of defensive castles on the remote Northumberland coast, between Lindisfarne to the north and Dunstanburgh to the south. A fort or castle has stood on the site since the fifth century. A fort was destroyed by Vikings in 993 and the core of the present castle was built by the Normans in the eleventh century. Its condition deteriorated in the seventeenth century and it was bought in the nineteenth century by the industrialist William Armstrong who completed its restoration. It is still owned by the Armstrong family.

Girtin appears to have spent some time in Yorkshire on his 1796 tour, visiting York, Ripon, Fountains Abbey, Rivaulx Abbey and Richmond before continuing up the east coast to Durham, Newcastle, Warkworth, Bamburgh and Lindisfarne. He then made a detour into southern Scotland and the abbeys of Kelso, Dryburgh and Jedburgh. His exact itinerary is unknown however.

Girtin’s exact contemporary and fellow Londoner J.M.W. Turner made a similar tour in the summer of 1797 possibly inspired by his friend. He also visited the same Northumberland castles and Scottish border abbeys before crossing to the Lake District, returning via Harewood House and York. Three drawings of Bamburgh Castle by Turner are in his 1797 sketchbook in the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery (D00955-7).

A number of finished watercolours originated from his 1796 tour including ten Royal Academy exhibits in 1797. An upright view of Bamburgh Castle of the same size, set against a stormy sky, is in the Tate Gallery (see Greg Smith, op. cit., no.57, p.83, ill.).

Many of the large important watercolours from this tour are now in museums. Views of Durham are in the Getty Museum, V. & A., Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle and the Whitworth Art Gallery, of Lindisfarne (Yale Center for British Art and British Museum), Dunstanburgh Castle (Laing Art Gallery) and Warkworth Castle (Yale and V. & A.).

A version of this view, with different figures, was published as an engraving for The Copper Magazine, pl. cxxxvi on 1st September 1797.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. (1775-1851)

The Poorhouse at Hadley, Hertfordshire

Watercolour over pencil

24.5 by 26.9 cm., 9 ½ by 10 ½ in.

Provenance: Lady Lucas; Mrs F.L. Evans; With Colnaghi’s, London, 1951; Private Collection since 2014

The present watercolour, which dates from circa 1794, is characteristic of Turner’s early work with his careful use of line and restricted colour palette. His early training as an architectural draughtsman and interest in topographical accuracy is evident. The influence of Canaletto’s work is also still in evidence here, in the slightly broken, dashed effect of line.

The village of Hadley or Monken Hadley lies just to the north of London, in the borough of Barnet. It was in the county of Middlesex until 1889, when its borders were redrawn and it became part of Hertfordshire. In 1762 Prudence West set up a local branch of Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital at Hadley, housing forty children in what was locally known as Mr Warboy’s House. Between 1759 and 1773, there were five branch hospitals established around the country at Shrewsbury, Hadley, Ackworth, Chester and Westerham. The Hadley Foundling Hospital only remained open until 1768, when the parish took control of it and turned it into the local poorhouse. Until this point, care of the poor had been basic with an overseer charged with looking after those in need. However, overseers were allowed to take any profits, so they spent as little as possible. When the parish took over the poorhouse conditions improved for the residents, until the end of the Napoleonic Wars led to a rise in the number of residents and a deliberate change in policy to make conditions as unpleasant as possible, in order to reduce numbers. In 1834 the Poor Law Act led to the closing of local poorhouses like the one at Hadley.

Turner entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1789, at the age of 14 and exhibited his first work there the following year. He exhibited his first oil at the Royal Academy in 1796, was elected Associate of the Academy in 1799 and Academician in 1802. In about 1793 he began to attend Dr Thomas Monro’s informal Academy at 8 Adelphi Terrace, London, working alongside Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and other young

artists, copying work by other, more established artists including John Robert Cozens (1752-1797) and Edward Dayes (1763-1804). In November 1798, Turner and Girtin apparently told the artist and diarist Joseph Farington (1747-1821), that ‘they had been employed by Dr Monro 3 years to draw at his house in the evenings. They went at 6 and staid til Ten.’ (Diary entry 12 November 1798, eds. Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre, The Diary of Joseph Farington, Vol. III, 1979, p. 1090).

Dr Monro (1759-1833) was part of a dynasty of doctors who ran Bridewell and Bethlem Hospitals and maintained an extensive private practice. His methods and views were regarded, even at the time, as ‘wanting in humanity.’ However, his connoisseurship of art and interest in and support of young artists was well-known. His father, Dr John Monro,, lived briefly in Hadley after his retirement and Thomas’s brother James was also subsequently a resident. Dr Monro apparently had a private asylum at Hadley and Turner’s mother was for a time treated there before she was transferred to Bethlem Hospital. (Andrew Wilton, ‘London and the Home Counties 1793–5’, April 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012).

There are further watercolours by Turner of the village of Hadley, both views of St Mary’s Church, one in the Tate Gallery, London and one in a private collection. The former was probably commissioned by Dr Thomas Monro and was sold on his death at Christie’s on 26th June 1833. The latter is dated 1793 on the gravestone. It is interesting to note that in 1802 Thomas Hearne (1744-1817) drew the Poorhouse in a highly detailed work, looking in the opposite direction to the present watercolour (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven).

We are grateful to Andrew Wilton who confirmed the attribution to Turner in 2013 and the dating to circa 1794.

Circle of Henry Fuseli, R.A. (1741-1825)

Study of the Vision of Catherine of Aragon

Numbered upper right: 29/30/78

With a pencil study of a man’s head verso

Pen and black ink and grey washes over pencil on laid paper

35.8 by 50.7 cm., 14 by 20 in.

Provenance:

Oliver Robin Bagot (1914-2000), Levens Hall, 1974

Literature:

Turner 1775-1851, exhibition catalogue 1974, no.B45, p.180 as by Mauritius Lowe

Exhibited:

London, Royal Academy of Arts, Turner Bicentenary Exhibition, 16th November 1974 to 2nd March 1975, no. B45 as by Mauritius Lowe

This impressive drawing, previously attributed to Mauritius Lowe (1746-1793), relates closely to a painting by Fuseli exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1781 and now Lytham St Annes Museum (see Martin Myrone, Gothic Nightmares – Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination, exhibition catalogue, 2006, no.100, pp.152-3, ill.). It is based on a scene from Shakespeare’s King Henry the Eighth, Act IV, Scene II when Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of King Henry VIII, falls asleep and has a vision. She is shown reclining on her deathbed dreaming of eternal happiness as she reaches up to heavenly figures. However she dies the next morning.

11

Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough (1772-1837)

A view taken at Bromley Hill, Kent

Signed with initials and inscribed, lower right: Bromley Hill/A.L.

Pencil

38.2 by 30.5cm., 15 by 12 in.

Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough, the daughter of Amelia Egerton and Sir Abraham Hume (a noted collector of Old Masters and an authority on Titian), was a talented artist in watercolour and pencil specialising in landscapes and botanical subjects. Joseph Farington (1747-1821) described her work as ‘far superior to any that I have seen made by an Amateur artist’ (Joseph Farington, Diary, 6 February 1808). She was taught by Thomas Girtin and then by Henry Edridge and was an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy from 1807 to 1822 and at the British Institution in 1825.

In 1793, Amelia married Sir Charles Long (17601838) and lived at Bromley Hill Place, Kent, where she designed the celebrated gardens, with their two mile long, picturesque walks. The gardens have disappeared but the house still stands. The house and its surroundings offered Long an endless source of inspiration and many of her paintings and watercolours depicted views from and of Bromley Hill. Between 1811 and 1817, she exhibited four paintings of views from the grounds of her home at the Royal Academy and she also produced a series of soft-ground etchings of views of Bromley Hill.

John Constable, R.A. (1776-1837)

A view of Borrowdale, recto; with a study of four Cumbrian children, verso

Watercolour over pencil

13.3 by 18.4 cm., 5 ¼ by 7 ¼ in.

Provenance: Clifford Constable; Isabel Constable; P.S. Clayton;

Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 16 November 1962, lot 119, bt Agnew’s; With Thomas Agnew, where bought February 1963; By descent to the present owner

Literature:

Charles Rhyne, ‘Constable Drawings and Watercolours in the Collections of Mr & Mrs Paul Mellon and the Yale Center for British Art: Part 1. Authentic Works’, Master Drawings, No, 2, Summer 1981, p. 129, under no. 14 for a listing of the watercolour verso;

Graham Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, 1996, Vol. Text, p, 106, no 06.242; Vol. Plates, pl. 617, ill., recto: Vol. Text, p. no. 108, no. 06.260; vol. Plates, pl. 632, ill. verso

Exhibited:

London, Thomas Agnew and Sons, 90th Annual Exhibition of Water-Colours and Drawings, 21st January to 2nd March 1963, no. 24

Constable spent just under two months between September and October 1806, in the Lake District. The trip was probably financed by his maternal uncle David Watts (1754-1816), who owned a house on Lake Windemere and is one of only a few ‘sketching tours’ in the traditional sense that Constable undertook.

Constable’s visit was probably inspired by his early patron Sir George Beaumont (1753-1827) and fellow artist Joseph Farington (1747-1821), both of whom had been regular visitors since the 1770s. Constable would have been familiar with Farington’s Views of the Lakes in Cumberland and Westmorland, published in 1785, following his four year stay in Keswick between 1776 and 1780. Furthermore Constable would have known Girtin’s watercolours of the Lake District, worked up from Beaumont’s own studies. Beaumont was a keen supporter of Girtin and not only owned around thirty watercolours by the artist, but was also an associate member of Girtin’s sketching club and he actively encouraged Constable to study Girtin’s work, in addition to the Old Masters such as Claude and Poussin. An inscription on the verso of a similar watercolour in the V&A confirms some of Constable’s main influences at this point, ‘fine cloudy day tone very mellow like – the mildest of/Gaspar Poussin and Sir GB’.

The challenging and unfamiliar landscapes that Constable explored in the Lake District were in stark contrast to that of his native East Anglia and required Constable to become more experimental in order to capture both the landscape and the dramatic effects of light and shadow and the constantly changing atmospheric effects on the peaks. Ian Fleming-Williams notes: ‘During this tour, greatly stimulated by the Lake scenery, Constable appears to have experienced within himself powerful and still deeper feelings about landscape and, gradually, through a process of stylistic blending and distillation, to have discovered ways of expressing these sensations’ (Ian FlemingWilliams, Constable and his Drawings, London, 1990, p. 77). His answer, as is clearly evidenced in the present watercolour was by reducing his palette, working with a greater tonal variety in soft, fluid washes, rather than through the use of hard line.

The results from this trip were impressive and he produced almost one hundred drawings and watercolours during his travels and was inspired to paint about a dozen oils on his return to London, many of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1807 and 1809. He was accompanied for much of the time by George Gardner (b.1778), a Kendall resident and the barrister son of the artist Daniel Gardner (1750-1805).

Borrowdale and its surroundings proved one of the most fertile regions of the Lakes for Constable and he ended up spending almost half of his entire visit there, arriving on 25th September and not leaving until 13th October. His travelling companion Gardner left after about ten days, bored of the role of onlooker to Constable’s productivity, leaving the artist to work without distraction. Topographically Borrowdale was almost cut off from its surroundings and the local population had relatively little contact with the outside world. This isolation adds a certain poignancy to Constable’s study of children on the verso of the sheet. The River Derwent flowed through the central valley floor, which was surrounded by a series of endlessly varied peaks thus providing a constantly changing and enormously complex viewpoint. Interestingly the region was rich in plumbago and produced some of the purest graphite in Europe.

Many of the watercolours produced during this trip are spread through institutions throughout the world and other views of Borrowdale are found in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

13

Joshua Cristall (1768-1847)

A Welsh Girl, Dolgelly, North Wales

Signed lower right: J. Cristall 1822

Watercolour over pencil heightened with touches of bodycolour and gum arabic 40.7 by 29.5 cm., 16 by 11 ½ in.

Provenance:

Purchased from the artist and by descent until sold, Sotheby’s, 10th July 1980, lot 51; With Thos. Agnew & Sons, London; The sale of a Limited Company, Christie’s, 17th November 2005, lot 52, where bought by the present owner

Exhibited:

London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, 1823, no.155

Cristall was born in London, was apprenticed to a dealer in china and glass and worked in a porcelain factory before being admitted to the Royal Academy as a student engraver in 1792 aged 24. In the summer of 1802, he went on his first sketching trip of North Wales, where he met up with fellow artists, John (see cat. 14) and Cornelius Varley (see cat. 15). He returned the following year with the latter and also in 1803 exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy. In 1804 he was one of the founding members of the Society of Painters in Water-colours and exhibited there almost every year until his death.

He visited Wales on four occasions, 1802, 1803, 1820 and 1831. The present studio work, dated 1822, is likely to originate from his 1820 tour. Dolgelly or Dolgellau as it is now known, lies on the river Wnion and is the old county town of Merionethshire.

14

John Varley (1778-1842)

View of Belgrave House and Westminster Bridge from a Sketch taken in 1811, shortly before it was pulled down

Signed lower right: J. Varley/1824 and signed and inscribed verso: View of Belgrave house & Westminster Bridge/from a Sketch taken in 1811. A Short time before it was pulld down/J. Varley Nov.r 8th 1824. and inscribed with notes of identification Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour, stopping out and gum arabic 20.9 by 29.1 cm., 8 ¼ by 11 ½ in.

Provenance: Spetchley Park, Worcestershire

Exhibited:

London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, 1825, no.121 as ‘Belgrave House –Milbank’

Belgrave House, situated on the Thames at Millbank, was called Grosvenor House when it was owned by the Grosvenor family from 1677 until 1806 when the family house was moved to Park Lane. It was renamed Belgrave House but was demolished in about 1813. The site is now roughly where Millbank Tower, built in 1963, stands.

15

Cornelius Varley (1781-1873)

Cader Idris, North Wales

Watercolour over pencil on laid paper

21.5 by 28 cm., 8 ½ by 11 in.

Provenance:

With unidentified collector’s mark verso (Lugt no.4781); With the Manning Gallery, London; With Spink-Leger, London, 2000; Private Collection until 2024

Literature:

Sarah Hobrough and Lowell Libson, Feeling through the Eye - The ‘New’ Landscape in Britain 1800-1830, exhibition catalogue, 2000, no.91, p.95, ill. and also ill. p.14

Exhibited:

London, Spink-Leger, Feeling through the Eye, 14th March to 19th April 2000, no.91

Cornelius undertook his first trip to North Wales during the summer of 1802 with his brother John and the architect and geologist, Thomas Webster. The success of this visit inspired him to return the following year, when he travelled with fellow artist, Joshua Cristall (see no.13).

At 2930ft, Cader Idris, which lies at the southern edge of Snowdonia, dominates its surroundings. Varley and Joshua Cristall were fascinated by the mountain and by the constantly changing effects of light and weather on the mountain and its surroundings. Cornelius depicted the mountain from the distance, as in the present watercolour, as well in detail and up close.

16

Samuel Jackson (1794-1869)

Llanberis Lake and Dolbadarn Castle, North Wales

Watercolour over traces of pencil 19.7 by 28.6 cm., 7 ¾ by 11 ¼ in.

Provenance: With Thos. Agnew & Sons, London, 2002; Private Collection until 2024

Literature: Agnew’s, Watercolours & Drawings, exhibition catalogue, 2002, no.69

Exhibited: London, Thos. Agnew & Sons, 129th Annual Exhibition of English Watercolours & Drawings, 12th February to 8th March 2002, no.69

This is a view looking south-east down Llanberis Lake towards Snowdon with the ruins of Dolbadarn Castle visible to the right. The view was much painted in the early nineteenth century most notably by Turner.

Samuel Jackson (1794-1869)

The Avon Gorge from Leigh Woods near Bristol

Watercolour over traces of pencil heightened with bodycolour and stopping out 21.9 by 29.8 cm., 8 ½ by 11 ¾ in.

Provenance:

With Thos. Agnew & Sons, London, 2002; Private Collection until 2009; With Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, 2009; Private Collection until 2024

Literature: Agnew’s, Watercolours & Drawings, exhibition catalogue, 2002, no.73

Exhibited: London, Thos. Agnew & Sons, 129th Annual Exhibition of English Watercolours & Drawings, 12th February to 8th March 2002, no.73

This is one of the most commonly depicted Bristol views, looking down the Avon Gorge towards Clifton from Leigh Woods, a popular sketching area for Bristol artists. It predates the Clifton Suspension Bridge which was built by Brunel in the 1850s. On the hill to the left is the Clifton Observatory built in the 1760s with the terraced houses of Clifton beyond. An earlier watercolour of this view by Jackson was with Guy Peppiatt Fine Art in 2024 (see summer exhibition catalogue 2024, no.29).

18

George Arthur Fripp, R.W.S. (1813-1896)

On the Avon near Bristol

Signed lower left: G.A. Fripp/1838 and inscribed on part of old mount attached to the backboard: On the Avon near Bristol/Fripp Watercolour heightened with bodycolour 21.9 by 36.4 cm., 8 ½ by 14 ¼ in.

Provenance:

With Heather Newman, where bought November 2001; Martin Davies, Bristol (1924-2023)

This is a view looking down the Avon Gorge towards Bristol with the Clifton Observatory visible to the left (see also no.17). This is an early work by Fripp who was Bristol born but travelled extensively. In 1834 he spent seven months with William James Müller on a tour of Europe and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and the Society of Painters in Water-colours from 1838.

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881)

A view over Donnington, West Berkshire

Signed lower left: S. Palmer

Watercolour over pencil, heightened with bodycolour and white chalk

29.6 by 52.8 cm., 11 ½ by 20 ¾ in.

Provenance:

Given to the artist's father-in-law, John Linnell (1792-1882), 1846; Thence by descent;

Given to A. H Palmer, 1906;

Given by A. H. Palmer, as a gift, to Herbert Linnell; By descent to Mrs Hugh Linnell (1938-2023)

Literature:

A H Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, 1972, p. 74

Exhibited:

Probably, London, Old Watercolour Society, 1843, no. 131

Palmer here depicts Donnington Castle House and outbuildings in Berkshire, nestled below the ruins of Donnington castle. The castle was built in the late 14th Century and owned by several monarchs including Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I. By the outbreak of the Civil War, the castle belonged to John Packer, a prominent courtier, who became a Parliamentary supporter. The King ordered Sir John Boys to take control of the castle, which given its strategic location, on the crossroads linking London, the West Country, Oxford and the South Coast, meant that the castle was almost continually besieged. When the Royalists eventually abandoned the castle in 1646, Parliament ordered that the castle be destroyed and only the gatehouse was left standing. When the Royalists abandoned the site, John Packer was allowed to reclaim his lands and in 1648, he began work building a new residence, Donnington Castle House. On his death in 1649, his son continued rebuilding, including the village. During World War II, the house was requisitioned as use for accommodation for the 101st Airborne Division, US Air Force and in 1950, Derek Parker-Bowles, the former father-in-law of Queen Camilla purchased the house. It remains in private hands.

Samuel Palmer’s son, Alfred Herbert, recorded that his father spent the months from August to October 1843 in West Berkshire, based in nearby Thatcham, about four miles to the east of Donnington. ‘Here he painted two water-colours which were exhibited the following year at the Gallery of the Old Society and the visit led to the production of an admirable drawing which appeared at the same exhibition under a title whose accuracy no one appears to have challenged. At Donnington, Berkshire; the

Birthplace of Chaucer’. (A. H. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, 1972, p. 74). Alfred Palmer continued that it was ‘without exception one of the best examples of my father’s subdued manner that I have seen. It seems astounding that a painter as accomplished as this drawing proves him to have been should ever have been concerned about “small monies’ or the number of “dips” allowable for an evening’s study’ (op. cit.).

The present watercolour was apparently given to Palmer’s father-in-law John Linnell in 1846, in payment for a loan and the work remained with the family. There is a note by A.H. Palmer on the old backboard, signed and dated Nov 18th 1922, which states that the white chalk in the sky of the present watercolour was added by John Linnell.

During the 1840s Palmer experimented with a range of techniques and palettes, striving to find a style that proved suitable for the subject matter he wanted to explore and would find favour with the public and therefore provide a living. He experimented initially with boldly coloured, large-scale watercolours, principally of subjects taken from literature or from his travels. However, he also began to explore a more subdued, naturalistic palette as we see here and to search for suitable subjects in the British countryside. As Colin Harrison notes, Palmer was concerned that ‘the use of a violent colour immediately shocks one, and it [should be] dappled about and melted into delicacies’ (Colin Harrison, The Works of Samuel Palmer, 2021, p.78). The depiction of the simple beauty inherent in rural life, shows the continued importance of his formative years at Shoreham.

Sir George Hayter (1792-1871)

Study of a Landscape with Trees in Winter

Watercolour on laid paper

10.7 by 15.6 cm., 4 ¼ by 6 in.

Provenance:

Iolo Aneurin Williams (1890-1962); By descent until 2024

This is a rare landscape watercolour by Hayter who is known for his large scale history paintings. His large painting of the interior of the Old House of Commons involved almost 400 individual portrait and took him ten years to complete (1833 to 1843) - it is now in the National Portrait Gallery. He painted Queen Victoria as a girl in 1832-33 and was appointed as her ‘Portrait and Historical Painter.’ He painted her coronation, marriage and the christening of her oldest son the Prince of Wales and was knighted in 1842.

This is part of a group of watercolours dating from 1857 most of which were given by Iolo Williams to the British Museum in 1939.

21

George Sidney Shepherd (1784-1862)

Harvesters loading Sheaves of Corn near Louth, Lincolnshire

Signed lower right: Geo. Sidney Shepherd. 1832

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and scratching out

54.6 by 66.7 cm., 21 ½ by 26 ¼ in.

Provenance:

With Agnew’s, London, 2001; Private Collection until 2024

Literature: Agnew’s, Watercolours & Drawings, 2001, no.82, ill.

Exhibited: London, Agnew’s, Watercolours & Drawings - 128th Annual Exhibition, 1st to 30th March 2001, no.82

Shepherd was a London-born artist who specialised in topographical and architectural watercolours especially of his native city. This unusually large work by him may be the watercolour exhibited at the New Watercolour Society in 1832, no.133 as ‘HayMakers’. Behind is the 300 ft. spire of St James’s Church in Louth, Lincolnshire.

William

Callow,

R.W.S. (1812-1908)

The Rialto Bridge, Venice

Signed lower right; W.Callow 1841

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and scratching out 33.4 by 48.9 cm., 12 ¾ by 19 ¼ in.

Exhibited:

Probably London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, 1841, no.101, as ‘The Rialto at Venice’

This studio work is based on sketches made by Callow on his first visit to the city in 1840. His stay coincided with J.M.W. Turner and they were staying in the same hotel. Callow wrote in his diary:

‘The next time I met Turner was at Venice, at the Hotel Europa, where we sat opposite at meals and entered into conversation. One evening whilst I was enjoying a cigar in a gondola I saw Turner in another one sketching San Giorgio, brilliantly lit up by the setting sun. I felt quite ashamed of myself idling away my time whilst he was hard at work so late’ (William Callow – an Autobiography, edited by H.M. Cundall, 1908, pp.66-67).

This view of the Rialto was taken from near the Albergo Leone Bianco and was a popular one for artists. Turner’s version of the view is in the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Samuel Prout O.W.S. (1783-1852)

A view of the Doge's Palace, looking towards the Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice

Signed lower right: S Prout

Watercolour over pencil heightened with touches of bodycolour and scratching out 27 by 42.2 cm., 10 ¾ by 16 ¾ in.

Provenance:

With The Fine Art Society, London, April 1965 (no. 7967/81); Private collection, Germany until 2024

The composition of this watercolour relates closely to Prout’s lithograph The Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice, published in ‘Sketches in France, Switzerland and Italy’ in1839 (see T. Wilcox, Samuel Prout, A Grand Tour in Watercolour, London, 2017, p. 86, fig. 19). In both this watercolour and the lithograph Prout has moved the two Byzantine columns of St Theodore and St Mark onto the quayside.

We are grateful to Timothy Wilcox for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.

William Callow, R.W.S. (1812-1908)

Paris from Bercy

Signed lower left and indistinctly dated Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour 22.7 by 32.1 cm., 9 by 12 ½ in.

Provenance:

With Walker Galleries, London, 1940; Private Collection since circa 1970

Exhibited: London, Walker Galleries, Exhibition of English Water-colours, 1940

This is a view of the south bank of Paris taken from Bercy on the banks of the Seine. In the centre is the dome of the Pantheon standing on the Montagne SainteGeneviève built between 1758 and 1790. To the left is the smaller dome of Les Invalides dating from the late 17th century.

Callow moved to Paris in 1831 and shared a studio with Thomas Shotter Boys (1803-1874). The crispness of his early work shows the influence of Richard Parkes Bonington. He remained in Paris for ten years and built up a successful drawing practice amongst the French aristocracy.

25

David Roberts R.A. (1796-1864)

A View of Jaffa

Signed, dated and inscribed, lower left: Jaffa March 26th/1839/David Roberts 1839

Pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour on blue paper 24 by 34.2 cm., 9 ½ by 13 ½ in.

Provenance:

Anonymous sale; Christie’s, London, 17 June 1969, lot 167, bt. Manning Gallery for 420 gns; Anonymous sale; Christie’s, London, 15 June 1982, lot 139; With Mathaf Gallery, London; Anonymous sale; Christie’s, London, 2 April 1996, lot 93; Private Collection until 2024

Engraved:

By L. Haghe, as a lithograph, 1843, for D. Roberts, The Holy Land, 1842-49, vol. II, pl. 62

Roberts was in Jaffa between 25th and 27th March 1839 and two of his watercolours of the city, both dated 26th March, were lithographed in The Holy Land volume II; the present watercolour showing Jaffa looking north and a second watercolour depicted the city looking south, pl. 61 of vol. II of The Holy Land. In the accompanying text, Roberts describes in detail Jaffa’s commanding coastal position: ‘On the South, it overlooks a wide and rich succession of plains spreading to Gaza; on the North, its horizon is the noble ridge of Mount Carmel.’ He continues: ‘The appearance of Jaffa from the sea is stately. To eyes wearied with the monotony of the shore, and the hovels which form its villages, its situation is commanding from its being built on a cone-shaped eminence which dips boldly in the sea… Most of the streets are paved in steps; and the houses, some of which are of considerable size, stand in terraces and thus add to the general effect… ‘Here Noah is said to have built the Ark! - here Andromeda to have been exposed to the Sea-Monster; - and here Perseus to have bathed the wounds received in battle with the Centaurs.’

James Roberts (circa 1800-1867)

The Transept from the North Entrance, Great Exhibition of 1851, Hyde Park

Signed with initials lower left: London/May 20 1851 JR Watercolour and bodycolour on buff paper 24.6 by 34.4 cm., 9 ½ by 13 ½ in.

Provenance:

Andre and Olga Wormser, Paris; By descent in the family since circa 1930

This watercolour shows a view from the North Transept looking across the crossing of the Crystal Palace with the Indian and Turkish sections visible and an Elm tree in the centre. This appears to be an on-the-spot sketch preparatory to a more finished watercolour of this subject in the Royal Collection, dated ‘June 1851’ (see Delia Millar, The Victorian Watercolours and Drawings in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, 1995, vol. II, no.4654, ill. p.744, RCIN I9988). Queen Victoria commissioned a series of views of the interior the Great Exhibition from James Roberts, nine of which are still in the Royal Collection. Roberts was paid £33.12s by the Queen in August 1851 for the first group of watercolours and another £36 4s 6d for seven more in November of the same year.

Joseph Paxton (1803-1865) won the commission to design the Crystal Palace on 15th July 1850 and it was built by the engineering firm Fox, Henderson & Co. in only nine months using over 5,000 workers. The building was eventually 1848 feet long, 456 feet wide and 135 feet high. It included 900,000 square feet of glass which weighed nearly 400 tons. At the close of the fair, the whole building was taken down and reerected at Sydenham in South London with the area still known as Crystal Palace. It burnt down in 1936.

The exhibition ran from 1st May to 15th October 1851 and was the first of a series of fairs celebrating the culture and industry of the world and included exhibitors from Britain’s ‘Colonies and Dependencies’ and forty-four ‘Foreign States’. It was an enormous success attracting six million visitors with an average daily attendance of over 42,000 people. The profit from the event was used to fund the three new South Kensington museums - the Natural History, Science and the Victoria and Albert. James Roberts was born in England but was in Paris by 1817 when he is recorded copying pictures in the Louvre at the same time as Bonington. He worked as a drawing master to the French aristocracy, including the French King, who is likely to have recommended him to Queen Victoria when he came to London to escape the Revolution of 1848. He worked extensively for the Queen from August 1848 until 1861 drawing interiors of Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Osborne House, Balmoral and Clarence House, most of which are still in the Royal Collection although the Queen appears to have given some away as presents. He is likely to have returned to Paris in 1861.

27

William Henry Hunt O.W.S. (1790-1864)

Girl Reading a Letter by Lamplight

Signed lower left: W. HUNT 1827

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and scratching out 38.2 by 27.2 cm., 15 by 10 ¾ in.

Provenance:

Bought by Sir John and Lady Witt, 1970, their sale, Sotheby’s, 19th February 1987, lot 147, illustrated on cover, sold £23,000 hammer; Private Collection until 2019

Literature:

John Witt, William Henry Hunt (1790-1864) - Life and Work with a Catalogue, 1982, no.548

Exhibited:

Probably London, Society of Painters in Water-colour, 1829, no. 13 or no.214;

Wolverhampton Central Art Gallery, Preston, Harris Museum and Art Gallery and Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, William Henry Hunt 1790-1864, 1981, no.101

This is one of Hunt’s best known works showing a woman who appears to have recently returned home to find an eagerly awaited letter. She has rushed into the room without removing her coat, bonnet or gloves. During the late 1820s and 1830s the artist produced a series of interior subjects lit by candlelight. The sitter is probably Miss Moore, a pupil of the artist, whose father was connected with the theatre, one of Hunt’s great passions. She appears in several watercolours by the artist including Miss Moore Sewing, formerly in the collection of Mr and Mrs Cyril Fry and A Bedchamber, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. There were a group of 12 letters between artist and pupil, also formerly in the Fry collection (op. cit, p. 151, no 82).

William Henry Hunt

O.W.S. (1790-1864)

Sunday Afternoon

Signed lower right on the chest: W HUNT

Watercolour heightened with bodycolour and scratching out 29.3 by 33.4 cm., 11 ½ by 13 in.

The figure of the young woman is probably the artist’s wife Sarah. Not much is known about her - she was a much younger cousin on his mother’s side. She was just 18 when the couple married in September 1830 and is described as being kind and gentle. The chest of drawers, table, mirror and bed all appear in several other interior watercolours, including Girl reading at an window, dated 1832, in the collection of the Duke of Norfolk, Arundel Castle and Sunday Morning in the collection of the Huntingdon Library, San Marino.

William Henry Hunt O.W.S. (1790-1864)

The Gamekeeper

Signed lower right, W.HUNT

Pen and brown ink and watercolour over pencil heightened with gum arabic 34.9 by 23.6 cm., 13 ¾ by 9 ¼ in.

Provenance: Cyril Fry (1918-2010)

Literature:

Norwich, Castle Museum and London, J.S. Maas Gallery, William Henry Hunt 17901864, Water-colours and Drawings from the Collection of Mr & Mrs Cyril Fry, 1967, no 36; John Witt, William Henry Hunt, Life and Work, with a Catalogue, London 1982, p. 177, no. 377;

Joanna Selborne and Christina Payne, William Henry Hunt, Country People, London, 2017, p.10 detail, cat no, 5, pp.30-1

Exhibited:

London, Old Watercolour Society, probably 1824, no. 62 or 1825, no. 133 or 341; London, The Fry Gallery, Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Mr and Mrs Cyril Fry, 1967, no. 2;

Norwich, Castle Museum and London, J.S. Maas Gallery, William Henry Hunt 17901864, Water-colours and Drawings from the Collection of Mr & Mrs Cyril Fry, 1967, no 36; London, Courtauld Institute of Art, William Henry Hunt; Country People, 2017, no. 5

During the early 19th Century depictions of rural working people were popular in both art and literature. William Henry Pyne, Robert Hills, Joshua Cristall and Thomas Uwins, as well as William Henry Hunt, all exhibited watercolours of rural figures. It was a period of profound social and economic change, with radical developments in both industry and agriculture and the rapid growth of urban centres gathered pace during Hunt’s lifetime. Economic depression at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 led to periods of unrest in both towns and the countryside, culminating in the Swing Riots of 1830 and anger at the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, making it compulsory for people to enter the poorhouse before they could obtain poor relief.

Such subjects could be interpreted in two ways. They were either seen as symbolic of a lost, or vanishing way of life and a harking back to a more peaceful, simpler way of life, in contrast to the destitution, poverty and violence of life for the urban poor. Alternatively they were interpreted as symbolic of the tough existence of rural life. Hunt’s figures were usually of skilled workers, head gardeners, gamekeepers etc. They were dignified individuals, secure in their social position and happy with their standing as important figures in the running of large estates. He avoided overt social comment and concentrated instead on an extreme realism and a sense of individuality.

Hunt appears to have started painting these subjects when working for his two aristocratic patrons, the 5th Earl of Essex and 6th Duke of Devonshire during the 1820s. His first exhibited portrait of a Gamekeeper (1824) depicted the keeper in the service of the Earl of Essex. At Chatsworth the artist created a series of portraits of the butler, housekeeper, groom of the chamber and footman, all in the service of the Duke of Devonshire, and these are still in the family collection. Such works were commissioned to be hung in the servant’s hall and reflected the often genuine affection and bond between the senior staff and their employers.

Gamekeepers could be seen as somewhat contentious figures. They were unpopular with the rural poor, who often struggled to feed their families and were desperate to supplement their food. However, they were popular with Hunt’s clients, who were reliant on them to protect their estates and were senior members of estate staff. Sir George Beaumont commissioned David Wilkie (1785-1841) to paint portrait of his head keeper in 1811 and Sir Walter Scott had his gamekeeper Tom Purdie pained by C. R. Leslie (1794-1859) in 1824. Hunt clearly saw a ready market for his portraits of such figures and exhibited five portraits of Gamekeepers at the Old Watercolour Society in the four years between 1824 and 1828. He also depicted head gardeners, poachers and rural labourers.

William Henry Hunt O.W.S. (1790-1864)

Sunset with distant Trees

Signed lower right: W. HUNT

Watercolour

9.4 by 12.8 cm., 3 ¾ by 5 in.

Provenance: Cyril Fry (1918-2010)

During the 1820s and 1830s, Hunt frequently spent his winters in the coastal town of Hastings where he likely drew the present watercolour and no. 31. There he spent all his days, from early morning until dusk outside, capturing his surroundings, the buildings and the people of Hastings.

William Henry Hunt O.W.S. (1790-1864)

Sunset after a Storm

Watercolour heightened with white on blue paper

8.6 by 11.8 cm, 3 ½ by 4 ¾ in.

Provenance: Cyril Fry (1918-2010)

See note to no.30.

William Henry Hunt O.W.S. (1790-1864)

Head study of a Man

Pen and brown ink and watercolour on laid paper 9.6 by 8.3 cm., 3 ¾ by 3 ¼ in.

Provenance: Cyril Fry (1918-2010)

Literature:

Probably John Witt, William Henry Hunt, Life and Work, with a Catalogue, London 1982, p. 177, no. 378

Exhibited:

Probably, London, The Fry Gallery, Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Mr and Mrs Cyril Fry, 1967, no. 38a

Thackeray wrote: ‘If you want to see real nature now, real expression, real startling home poetry, look at every-one of Hunt’s heads. Hogarth never painted anything better than these figures’ (M.H. Spielman, The Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour, A Retrospective, 1804-1904, quoted in Witt op. cit., p. 26). Although Thackeray was referring to Hunt’s more finished exhibition portraits, the present small-scale, carefully observed study is full of character and individuality which indicates not only that the sitter was drawn from life, but was known to the artist.

Hunt had a number of friends within the black community and made several studies of these, including a pencil Portrait of a Young Girl at the Courtauld Institute, London; A Boy with a Slate at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and Study of a Young Model, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The abolition movement gripped fashionable London, turning Britain in the early 19th Century from a nation benefitting from slavery, to one that became an international supporter of abolition. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833. There were relatively large numbers of black residents throughout Britain, particularly in London, Liverpool, Kent and Edinburgh. During the 1840s and 1850s Britian became a popular destination from figures all over the world for the study of theology and medicine. Furthermore, numerous fugitive slaves arrived from the States and elsewhere. ‘In conscious tribute to urban diversity,’ (Jan Marsh ed., Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900, 2005, p. 14) artists regularly included black figures in their crowd scenes, such as in George Sidney Shepherd’s large exhibition watercolour of Old Covent Garden Market in London, painted in 1829 (with Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, 2023). Apparently, visitors from the United States remarked on the integration within Britain’s cities. However, intolerance and racism was also evident and this seems to have grown as the century progressed.

Hunt’s physical disability, whilst it appears not have affected the success of his career, would have caused issues and derision from some. This may have made Hunt sympathetic to others who might be considered to not be part of mainstream communities, including black people and those from Gypsy communities as well as performers and acrobats. Ann Mary Wood in her Reminiscences discusses Hunt’s tender and sympathetic nature and mentions that he enjoyed the company of ‘street conjurors, acrobats and … [black] minstrels were always welcome at the tea table of his humble lodging, and a certain ‘Bones’ in the latter troop was his especial friend’ (Simon Fenwick, 2006).

33

William Henry Hunt O.W.S. (1790-1864)

Study of a Boy wearing a Smock

Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour 16.8 by 10.1 cm., 6 ½ by 4 in.

Provenance: Mrs Emma Robinson, the artist’s daughter; By descent to her son, William Hunt Robinson; By descent to his eldest daughter Maud Marie Ennis (1886-1963); By descent to her son Desmond Wilfred Ennis (d. 2000); By descent to 2010; With W.S. Fine Art Ltd, London, 2010; Private collection, USA

Exhibited: W.S Fine Art, London, 2010, cat no 27, illus.

Literature: Andrew Wyld, W.S. Fine Art, exhibition catalogue, 2010, p. 54, cat no 27

34

William Henry Hunt O.W.S. (1790-1864)

A Still-life with a Bird’s Nest and Paeonia in a Bottle

Signed and dated lower right: 1833/W HUNT

Watercolour heightened with scratching out and gum arabic 37.8 by 26 cm., 15 by 10 ¼ in.

Ruskin described Hunt as ‘the best painter of still life that ever existed’ (Cook and Wedderburn, The Works of John Ruskin, 190312. vol. XV, p.220). During the later 1830s and 1840s, Hunt began to explore still-life subjects and their dazzling colours, bold designs and superb realism made them highly desirable. Indeed Roget records that in 1863 Hunt wrote to a friend saying ‘I was in hopes of trying my hand at figures, but have so many person’s promises to do fruit and flowers for them that I can get no time to do anything else’ (J. L. Roget, A History of the Old Water-Colour Society, 1891, vol. II, p. 201). Their appeal continued even beyond Hunt’s death. In 1872, Samuel Palmer remarked that ‘The only quite certain way of making money by watercolours is, I fancy, to do such figures, fruit and flowers as William Hunt did and to do them as well’ (A. H. Palmer, Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, p. 336).

Hunt’s decision to look for new subjects was in part a desire to find a suitable subject to challenge his technical range, but also it seems that as he became older his mobility became increasingly restricted, making painting en plein air difficult. This encouraged him to look at new subjects that allowed him to work indoors. He began to create still-life ‘sets’ from which he could draw his meticulously detailed and highly coloured studies. James Orrock (1829-1913) recalled seeing Hunt working up a still-life in his studio, with a ‘prepared background of crumpled brown paper upon which had been deposited and roughly built up patches of earth, and over these in ordered irregularity, a distribution of lichens and mosses. There were amongst the painter’s ‘properties’, handfuls of grass and sprigs of ivy’ (Byron Webber, James Orrock R.I, Painter, Connoisseur, Collector, London, 1903, p.164).

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

Botanical study including Roses, Fritillaria Imperialis and Bluebells

Signed lower centre: E. Lear.

Pencil and watercolour on a cut out cartouche shaped sheet, mounted onto a secondary sheet

16.2 by 21.8 cm., 6 ½ by 8 ¾ in.

Provenance:

Miss Fraser, circa 1830; K.S. Barrie, 1921;

Anonymous sale, Christie’s London, 10th July 1990, lot 1 (part); Vivien Noakes (1937-2011) and by descent

Catalogue nos. 35 to 38 originally formed part of a keepsake album compiled either by, or for Miss Fraser, a pupil of Lear, in the late 1820s. Peter Levi states that the

album was a ‘First Drawing Prize’ given to Miss Fraser by the artist (Peter Levi, Edward Lear A Biography, 1995, pp.24-25).

Whilst still a teenager, from about 1826/7, Lear began to work as a natural history illustrator. In 1830, his early success encouraged him to look to produce Illustrations of the Family of Psittacide or Parrots, a lavishly illustrated publication to be published in fourteen parts and which he intended to finance by subscriptions. Sadly the expense of the printing and hand-colouring, along with the slow paying of many of the subscribers, led to the project being abandoned. However, by 1831, Lear was working for Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby (1775-1851) at Knowsley and collaborating with celebrated ornithologist, John Gould (1804-1881) both of which established his reputation as one of the leading artists in the field.

36

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

A Study of a Rose with Butterflies

Signed lower centre: E. Lear. Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour heightened with white on shaped grey paper, cut out and mounted onto a secondary sheet, with further pencil illustrations on the sheet framing the design

21.5 by 18 cm., 8 ½ by 7 in.

Provenance: Miss Fraser, circa 1830; K.S. Barrie, 1921; Anonymous sale, Christie’s London, 10th July 1990, lot 1 (part); Vivien Noakes (1937-2011) and by descent

See note to no.35.

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

A Frontispiece Design of a Still Life with Artist’s Palette, Illustrated Musical Songbook, Lute, Quill and Inkwell, with Garlands of Flowers

Signed lower left in the margin of the secondary sheet; E. Lear

Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour mounted onto a secondary sheet 19.2 by 15.8 cm., 7 ½ by 6 ¼ in.

Provenance:

Miss Fraser, circa 1830; K.S. Barrie, 1921; Anonymous sale, Christie’s London, 10th July 1990, lot 1 (part); Vivien Noakes (1937-2011) and by descent

This design brings together many of Lear’s interests. As well as being a gifted natural history painter and poet, Lear was also a talented musician and composer. Many of his poems were intended to be sung, including his Nonsense rhymes, as well as several of his longer poems, The Owl and the Pussycat, The Pelican Chorus and The Jumblies, amongst others. He also composed music for a dozen of his friend Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poems.

See also note to no.35.

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

A Figure in a Tropical Coastal Landscape admiring two Birds with bright Plumage

Signed lower centre: E. Lear.

Pencil and watercolour mounted onto a secondary sheet 16 by 19.8 cm., 6 ¼ by 7 ¾ in.

Provenance: Miss Fraser, circa 1830; K.S. Barrie, 1921;

Anonymous sale, Christie’s London, 10th July 1990, lot 1 (part); Vivien Noakes (1937-2011) and by descent

Literature: Vivien Noakes, The Painter Edward Lear, 1991, p. 35, ill.

This drawing appears to date from the early 1830s and according to Vivien Noakes, the influence of Thomas Stothard’s illustrations for The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is evident. Robert Peck notes that Lear’s watercolour vignettes of this type are very similar to the decoration on English and Meissen porcelain from the period. For another example, see Robert McCracken Peck, The Natural History of Edward Lear, 2016, no.20, p.28, ill.).

See also note to no.35.

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

The Tomb of Cecilia Metella, Rome

Signed lower left: Tomb of Cecilia Metella. Rome/Edward Lear del./1839

Pencil and stump heightened with white on grey paper

24.7 by 34.7 cm., 9 ¾ by 13 ½ in.

Provenance: Private collection, Milan

Lear arrived in Rome, aged twenty-five, in December 1837 on his first major overseas tour. Apart from two brief visits to England he remained there for the next ten years. This highly finished early drawing may be an unused illustration for Lear’s first major Italian publication ‘Views on Rome and its Environs’ produced in 1841 which included twenty-five lithographic plates. The Tomb of Cecilia Metella on the Appian Way was built in the 1st century BC as a mausoleum to Cecilia Metella, the daughter of a Consul and the wife of Marcus Licinius Crassus.

40

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

Florence from San Miniato

Signed lower right: E. Lear/1838

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic

19.3 by 30.2 cm., 7 ½ by 11 ¾ in.

Provenance:

With Davis Galleries, New York; Deane F. Johnson, his sale, Christie’s, 18th November 2004, lot 70; By descent to the present owner

This dates from Lear’s first European trip. He left England in the summer of 1837 and did not return permanently to London until the late 1840s. He reached Florence in November and recalled ‘the clear lilac mountains all round it – the exquisite walks on every side to hills covered with villages, convents and cypresses, where you have the whole city beneath you – the bustle of the Grand Duke’s court and the fine shops –the endless churches – the Zebra Cathedral of black and white marble – the crowds of towers and steeples – all these make Florence a little Paradise in its way – if it were but hotter. – Oh! How I used to go shivering about!’ (quoted in Jenny Uglow, Mr Lear – A Life of Art and Nonsense, 2017, pp.110-111). He left the city with some regret but the cold urged him southwards and he was in Rome in mid December.

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

The Village of Kastri, Delphi, Greece

Signed with monogram lower left Watercolour over traces of pencil heightened with bodycolour with original line mount

12 by 18.5 cm., 4 ¾ by 7 ¼ in.

Provenance:

The Marquess of Crewe, West Horsley Place, Surrey, by 1913; Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, her Estate sale, Sotheby’s, 27th May 2015, lot 128, where bought by the present owner

Literature:

Crewe House, London, Inventory, 1913, vol. 2, p.56, as ‘in Lord Crewe’s Study’; An Inventory... of Pictures at West Horsley Place, Surrey, the property of the Marquess of Crewe, 1938, p.39

This studio work is based on a sketch drawn on Lear’s visit to Delphi in April 1849. He was disappointed not to have reached Delphi when he was taken ill the previous year (see nos. 62-63). Travelling with Franklin Lushington, they travelled from Athens up through Attica to Thebes before continuing to Parnassus and Delphi.

The ancient Greeks considered Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, the centre of the world as the seat of Pythia the most important oracle of the period. When Lear was there, the ancient ruins were occupied by the town of Kastri and the site could not be excavated until the residents of the village were relocated which they were reluctant to do. Eventually an earthquake damaged Kastri in the 1880s and excavation could begin.

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

Cape Lefkada or Sappho’s Leap, Greece

Signed with monogram lower left Watercolour heightened with white 16.5 by 26cm., 6 ½ by 10 ¼ in.

Provenance: Charles Church (1823-1915); Bequeathed to his grandson, Humphrey Paget; By descent until sold at Christie’s, 11th July 1989, lot 180; Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, 4th July 2002, lot 227

Lear lived in Corfu during the winter months in the late 1850s and early 1860s but left for good when the island was handed back to the Greeks in 1864. He visited Lefkada on his tour of the other Ionian Islands between March and June 1863. Cape Lefkada is located at the southern tip of the island is famous for its dramatic white cliffs which are almost two hundred feet high. It is also known as Sappho’s Leap as according to legend the ancient poet Sappho threw herself into the sea from the cliff after being spurned by the beautiful sea god Phaon.

Lear visited the cliffs on 21st April 1863 and records in his diary: ‘Rose at 5. Coffee 5.30. A horrid night, but somehow I do not get worse, & we are ready to start at 5.30. Rocky hill sides, & paths winding among the usual Cistus…. are the order of the day. Ups & downs - & about 7 we near the great rocks of the narrowing… promontory. Lower down, we come to gaps, whence, looking over, the cliffs are vastly fine, - dark gray, & perpendicular from the dark water, edged with foam, tho’ the sea is calm. 5 ordinary vultures sate on a ridge of the highest edge. By 7.30, I was at the top of the highest cliffs, where there are remains of a temple – to the east, the cliff covered with wild cedar.’

An on-the-spot sketch drawn at 7.30 am of this view is in the Gennadius Library, Athens and is the basis for the present studio work (see Edward Lear & the Ionian Islands, exhibition catalogue, 2012, p.16, illustrated full page). It was also the basis for a lithograph, no. 11 in Lear’s Views in the Seven Ionian Islands published in 1863 (op. cit., p.100, ill.).

Edward Lear (1812-1888)

Jerusalem from near the Mount of Olives

Inscribed lower left: Jerusalem/25-26 April/1858

Pen and grey and brown ink and watercolour 21 by 32cm., 8 ¼ by 12 ½ in.

Provenance:

With the Fine Art Society, February 1973; Private Collection, London; With Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, 2008, where bought by the present owner

Lear arrived in Jerusalem from his home on Corfu on 27th March 1858. The city was busy with Easter tourists however, so he continued to Petra, returning to Jerusalem on 20th April. He began work on a painting of Jerusalem at sunset which Lady Waldegrave had commissioned. He had problems finding a suitable viewpoint until he ‘stumbled on an oblique North-East view, which I mean to paint’ (Letter to Lady Waldegrave, 27th May 1858, Somerset Record Office, Taunton). This was a view taken from the Mount of Olives with a higher viewpoint than the present drawing. He spent two weeks studying this view, during this time he executed the present drawing.

James Thomas Watts (1852-1930)

Sunny April morning in Bettws-y-Coed woods

Signed lower left: JAMES T WATTS

Watercolour heightened with white and touches of scratching out 25.5 by 35 cm., 10 by 13 ½ in.

Exhibited:

Conwy, Royal Cambrian Academy, 1903, no 383

Watts was born in Birmingham and lived for a number of years in Liverpool. He exhibited regularly in London and was an active member of the Liverpool Academy of Arts and the Royal Cambrian Academy, as well as of the Royal Birmingham Society

of Artists. He specialised in depicting woodland scenes, especially of North Wales and Lancashire, revelling in the constantly changing effects of seasons, weather and light and shadow. He was influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, as is evident in the present carefully depicted watercolour, with its clear, bright pigments and careful highlighting.

The Gwydyr Forest almost surrounds the village of Bettws-y-Coed and occupies an undulating plateau which is divided by the valleys of the rivers Llugwy, Lledr and Machno.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

The Valley of La Grande Chartreuse, France

Inscribed in a later hand verso: “The Grande Chartreuse’ ’original drawing by John Ruskin/Reproduced in Praeterita Vol II sold/to me by M.r …. Severn Sep.t 1900/Rob.t E. Cunliffe/Exhibited at Coniston 1900 Pen and brown ink and watercolour over pencil heightened with touches of bodycolour on blue paper 32 by 48.7 cm., 12 ½ by 19 in.

Provenance:

Bequest from the artist to Arthur and Mary Severn; Sold to Robert Ellis Cunliffe (1848-1902), September 1900; Acquired by the present owner, November 2007

Literature:

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn ed., The Works of John Ruskin, London, 190312, Vol. 35, Praeterita, illus. facing page p.473;

Exhibited:

Cumbria, Coniston Institute, Ruskin Memorial Exhibition, July to September 1900

Ruskin visited La Grande Chartreuse in 1849 and despite the dramatic position of the monastery and its surroundings, he appears underwhelmed by his visit. He records that he ‘had been totally disappointed with the Monastery itself, with the pass of approach to it, with the mountains round it, and with the monk who showed us through it. The buildings were meanly designed and confusedly grouped … And the monk … had no cowl worth the wearing, no beard worth the wagging, no expression but of superciliousness without sagacity, and an ungraciously dull manner…Having followed him for a time about the passages of the scattered building, in which there was nothing to show…we came to a pause at last in what I suppose was a type of a modern Carthusian’s cell, wherein, leaning on the window sill, I said something in the style of Modern Painters, about the effect of the scene outside upon religious minds. Whereupon, with a curl of his lip, “We do not come here,” said the monk, “to look at the mountains.” Under which rebuke I bent my head silently, thinking however all the same, “What then, by all that’s stupid, do you come here for at all?” (ibid).

This drawing belonged to Joan Severn (née Agnew) who was Ruskin’s second cousin, she became companion to Ruskin’s mother from 1864. She married Arthur Severn, the son of Ruskin’s friend Joseph in April 1871, and the two became executors of Ruskin’s estate as well as looking after him in his later years. It was bought by Robert Ellis Cunliffe in 1900. He was a successful Lancashire solicitor who formed a notable collection of watercolours including a number by Ruskin.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Stadtturm or City Tower, Innsbruck

Inscribed lower left: Insbruck.19 Sep ’35 and numbered 11 lower right Pencil

21.1 by 24.7 cm., 8 ¼ by 9 ¾ in.

Provenance:

Sale of the manuscripts and remaining library of John Ruskin, removed from his residence, Brantwood, Coniston, Sotheby’s 24th July 1930, bought Goodspeed; Goodspeed’s Bookshop, Boston, bought Winant, 1932; John Gilbert Winant (1889-1947), Governor of the state of New Hampshire; By descent to his son Rivington Winant (1925-2011); Acquired from his Estate in 2013

Ruskin spent two days in Innsbruck in mid September before continuing to Venice in October, which he was visiting for the first time. He started keeping a diary in 1835 and the entry for 20th September records: ‘Innsbruck. It is curious to look down the great square of this town; fine, very fine houses, like those of some large German city, and above, the enormous bulk of some of the most magnificent hills in the Tyrol, sprinkled with snow. The climate here was at this time magnificent – the sky cloudless, the sun blazing and hot, the mountains round glowing gorgeously beneath it…. I could hardly think we were on the north side of the Alps’ (see The Diaries of John Ruskin 1835-1847, selected and edited by Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehouse, 1956, p. 64).

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

The Cathedral, Chartres

Signed lower right: Chartres/JRuskin

Pencil on laid paper

14.6 by 22.2 cm., 5 ¾ by 8 ¾ in.

Provenance:

Joan Ruskin Severn, a gift from the artist; Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, 12th July 1984, lot 54; Acquired June 1999

This late impressionistic drawing dates from Ruskin’s tour of northern France in August to November 1880 in the company of fellow artists Joseph Severn and Hercules Brabazon Brabazon. They arrived in Calais on 23rd August and travelled via Abbeville, Amiens, Beauvais and Paris, arriving in Chartres on 7th September. Chartres Cathedral was Ruskin’s favourite French church. His diary entry for 10th September reads: ‘Up, D.G., in perfectly good health and lovely sunshine, and one thing lovelier than another in the inexhaustible old town. Up to crown of the northern spire last night, just at the best hour before sunset; all the plain a-glow for forty miles each way, as clear as if the air were glass – six thousand square miles of champaign and winding wood along the Eure’ (Cook and Wedderburn, The Works of John Ruskin, vol. XXXIII, p.xxiv). he was back in Paris by 17th September.

48

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Studies from the Palazzo Giustinian for ‘Stones of Venice’

Inscribed lower right: No 47. Palace of the Young Foscari/Dec 6th P.68. and extensively inscribed with notes

Pen and black ink and paper on buff paper

36.4 by 25.5 cm., 14 ¼ by 10 in.

Provenance:

Sale of the manuscripts and remaining library of John Ruskin, removed from his residence, Brantwood, Coniston, Sotheby’s 24th July 1930, bought Goodspeed; Goodspeed’s Bookshop, Boston, bought Winant, 1932; John Gilbert Winant (1889-1947), Governor of the state of New Hampshire; By descent to his son Rivington Winant (1925-2011); Acquired from his Estate in 2013

The Palazzo Giustinian, sometimes called the Palace of the young Foscari, was built circa 1471, next to the Palazzo Foscari. It was one of the last of the Gothic palazzi built in Venice and thought to have been built by the son of Doge Francesco Foscari. By 1820 it had become the Hotel Europa and Ruskin stayed there during his seminal trip of 1845, when he began to study and record the ancient buildings of Venice in earnest. Turner had previously stayed at the hotel whenever he visited Venice.

During the winter of 1876, when Ruskin escaped England, grieving the loss of Rose La Touche, he again stayed at the Hotel Europa. His intention during this trip was to look to revise his Stones of Venice, and amass material for a fourth volume, although this was abandoned when Ruskin became involved in the campaign to stop the proposed restoration of the façade of St. Mark’s.

The present sheet is typical of the studies that Ruskin made, recording plans, mouldings, details and making careful notes for future reference.

49

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Study of Silver Birches

Signed lower right: J Ruskin/1856

Pen and grey ink and watercolour over pencil 21.3 by 10 cm., 8 by 4 in.

Provenance:

Anonymous sale, Phillip’s, 16th July 1990, lot 18; Private Collection

Ruskin was passionately interested in trees, for their majestic beauty, for their place in the natural world and for their unique qualities. In 1842, he wrote to his father of an almost mystical experience he had when sketching an Aspen tree in Switzerland, ‘languidly, but not idly I began to draw; and as I drew the languor passed away, beautiful lines insisted on being traced – without weariness. More and more beautiful they became, as each rose out the rest, and took its place in the air. With wonder increasing every instant, I saw that they ‘composed’ themselves, by finer laws than any known to men. At last the tree was there, and everything that I had thought before about trees, nowhere’ (Cook and Wedderburn, Works, Vol. XXXV, p. 314).

He encouraged his students to not just look at the overall form or a tree, but to draw their leaves, twigs and branches. He would bring in his own examples, as well as twigs and leaves for his students to copy. He would also encourage them to look to other artists for inspiration, particularly Turner, who he believed to be the most accomplished at capturing trees. There is a study of trees in the Ashmolean Museum, which is a detail taken from Turner’s Crossing the Brook, 1815 (Tate Gallery, London). Ruskin intended it as a teaching aid to show his students at Oxford, how best to render the subtleties of light and shade in foliage without the use of colour. However, the composition is very similar to the present study.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Study of an apple

Signed with initials lower left

Watercolour

10.6 by 14.3 cm., 4 ½ by 5 ¾ in.

These four studies are part of a group of watercolour studies of apples drawn by Ruskin in the 1870s. Cook and Wedderburn used a study of a Blenheim orange apple as the frontispiece to the Library edition of The Elements of Drawing (E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn ed., The Works of John Ruskin, London, 1904, Vol. XV, ‘The Elements of Drawing’, illus. as frontispiece). They date it to 1873 and the two blemishes on the top are the same as no.52 so it is a fair assumption that the present group also date from the same year. Another study of an apple in a private collection (see Christopher Newall, John Ruskin – Artist and Observer, 2014, no.124, ill.) is inscribed on the mount (not by Ruskin) 22nd November 1873. It appears to show the same apple as in no. 51.

Ruskin is likely to have used these sketches to encourage his students to study fruit. He was an early supporter and lecturer at the Working Men’s College, in Red Lion Square, London, where between 1854 and 1858, he taught art to the men, mainly labourers and craftsmen looking to improve or alter their lot. In 1869, Ruskin was elected the First Slade Professor of Art, at Oxford University, where he taught the rising generation of privileged gentlemen. In 1871, Ruskin founded his own institution, The Guild of St George (still flourishing today), where he hoped that through the study and exploration of art, craft and the rural economy, society itself could be improved.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Study of the top of a Blenheim Orange apple

Watercolour

10.1 by 13.9 cm, 4 by 5 ½ in.

The Blenheim Orange was a cultivar found growing against a boundary wall of Blenheim Park, in Old Woodstock, Oxfordshire, by a Mr Kempster, in about 1740. It is regarded as a dual-purpose apple, so can be used for both cooking (if picked in late September) and eating (if picked from October onwards).

Another study of the same apple is in a private collection (see Christopher Newall, John Ruskin – Artist and Observer, 2014, no.124, ill.) – see note to no.50)

Another watercolour study of the same apple was illustrated as the frontispiece to The Elements of Drawing –see note to no.50.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Study of the bottom of a Bleinheim Orange apple

Watercolour 10.1 by 13.9 cm., 4 by 5 ½ in.

Still-lifes such as these four highly detailed, individualistic studies of apples demonstrate Ruskin’s scientific eye, his ability to depict not just a realistic, generic apple, but to depict a particular variety, capturing every tint and blemish on an apple. His interest in still life was wide ranging and extended to his study of rocks and geology, moss and lichens, through to plants, shells and fruit, birds and feathers. His interest was multi-layered, both as a requisite skill to capture the exact detail required for scientific study, but also in order to inform his teaching practice and his desire to encourage accuracy and knowledge through the careful observation of nature. Ruskin was taught by the celebrated still life artist William Henry Hunt (see cat. nos. 27-34) at two separate periods in 1854 and again in 1861 and both Ruskin, and his father, collected Hunt’s work.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Study of an apple

10.8 by 13.7 cm., 4 ½ by 5 ¼ in.

Watercolour

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Study of a Sunrise

Watercolour and bodycolour over traces of pencil 24.1 by 32.2 cm., 9 ½ by 12 ½ in.

Provenance:

Harold and Nicolette Wernick; Nicolette Wernick, her sale, Christie’s, 16th June 2010, lot 81

Exhibited:

Springfield Museum of Fine Art, Massachusetts, 19th Century English Art from the Collection of Harold and Nicolette Wernick, January to March 1988, no.35

Ruskin was fascinated by the beauty and constantly changing effects of the natural world and recorded several dramatic studies of the sun both rising and setting. Indeed Ruskin is recorded as habitually watching the dawn and leaving his supper, from quite a young age, to watch the sunset. His father wrote to a friend about this habit saying, ‘he visits as regularly as a soldier does his evening parade.’ (3 xxii-xxiii). In later life, he had a turret window specially constructed at Brantwood, to allow him to see the sky at dawn from the comfort of his home.

In his series of lectures, The Two Paths, published between 1858 and 1859, Ruskin encourages his students to ‘rise early, always watch the sunrise and the way the clouds break from the dawn’. (J. Ruskin, The Two Paths, 1858-8, p. 154). He believed that by trying to capture such views, artists were offered the opportunity to attempt to study and record the entire natural spectrum of colour and its subtle graduations

from one colour to another, in one place and with a constantly changing emphasis on the range of possible colour combinations. Furthermore the fleeting nature of the effects meant that the spectator had a limited amount of time in which to do this, thus it served a secondary valuable purpose.

As he grew older, Ruskin began to differentiate between the value of sunrise and sunset, believing the former to be more crucial for artistic study. He felt that the slightly subdued range of colours, caused by the frequent veil of mist was of greater importance.

Two sunrises were shown at the 1879 exhibition of Ruskin drawings at Messrs Noyes & Blakeslee, Boston, October 1879: no. 89 Sunrise from Denmark Hill (1868) and no. 90 Study of Sunrise

Frederic, Lord Leighton, P.R.A. (1830-1896)

Study of the Mona Lisa

Signed with monogram and inscribed upper right: L. da Vinci/1856

Pencil

24.2 by 19 cm., 9 ½ by 7 ½ in.

Provenance:

With Jeremy Maas, London, circa 1970; Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s Belgravia, 25th March 1980, lot 27; With Owen Edgar Gallery, London, circa 1990; Anonymous sale, Christie’s, 19th June 2014, lot 74, where bought by the present owner

Literature:

Christopher Newall, The Art of Lord Leighton, 1990, p.25, ill.

The present drawing dates from Leighton’s stay in Paris where he was based in a studio at 21 Rue Pigalle. He was there intermittently from 1855 until his permanent return to London in 1858. Leighton began to copy Old Master paintings in Italy in the 1850s when he was collecting material for his first major work Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna (bought by Queen Victoria and now National Gallery). Drawings by him after Signorelli, Carpaccio, Pollaiolo, Rossellino, Giotto, Raphael and others are in Leighton House Museum (for a full list, see A Victorian Master Drawings by Frederic, Lord Leighton, 2006, pp.113 and 115).

There are a number of recorded drawings by Leighton after works in the Louvre, all dated 1856. These include Anne of Cleeves after Holbein and Portrait of a young Man after Raphael (Christie’s, 1st March 1983, lot 111), Erasmus after Holbein (Leighton House, London) and Portrait of a Young Man after Franciabiagio (Christie’s, 27th July 1982, lot 32). Many of them are signed and dated as Leighton evidently considered them finished works of art in their own right.

The influence of Ingres’s highly finished portrait drawings is evident in this work. Leighton visited Ingres’s studio when living in Paris (see Mrs Russell Barrington, The Life, Letters and Works of Frederic Leighton, 1906, p.245) and he also would have seen the exhibition of his work at the Exposition Universale in 1856. In 1867 he bought an Ingres pencil drawing ‘Odalisque and Slave’ now in Harvard Art Museums.

Although Michelangelo is a more obvious influence in the contorted posture of some of Leighton’s paintings, he also thought highly of Leonardo. This is especially evident in ‘A Roman lady’ also known as ‘La Nanna’ which dates from 1859 and is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. While he was painting it his friend Giovanni Costa recalls that Leighton ‘had then Lionardo da Vinci in his mind’ (‘Notes on Lord Leighton’, Cornhill Magazine, March 1897, p.376) although the influence of Venetian sixteenth century art is also apparent.

The second half of the nineteenth century heralded a revival of interest in artists of the High Renaissance, especially Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Allen Staley writes in the introduction to the catalogue for his exhibition Victorian High Renaissance held at Manchester City Art Gallery and Minneapolis Institute of Art that: ‘The Victorian era saw a renaissance of the Renaissance. The impetus did not come entirely from England, but, for a variety of reasons, it came more from England than from anywhere else’ (Allen Staley, Victorian High Renaissance, 1978, p.18). In Leighton’s case this is partly due to his early artistic training in Europe. In 1841, when Leighton was 11, his family began to spend more time in continental Europe due to his mother’s ill health. They passed through Switzerland and Germany and Leighton studied for periods at the Academies in Berlin and Florence. In 1846 the family settled in Frankfurt and he enrolled at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut where he remained until August 1852 before spending three years in Rome. He was consequently well versed in European painting, both Old Master and contemporary and this influence is evident in the classicism of his later work.

We are grateful to Rosie Jarvie for her research on this drawing.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, A.R.A. (1833-1898)

Study of William Morris

Inscribed by May Gaskell lower centre: Portraits of William Morris/drawn for me by Sir Edward/Burne Jones 1896

Black chalk

13.6 by 10.5 cm., 5 ¼ by 4 in.

Provenance: May Gaskell (1853-1940);

Given by her to the grandfather of the present owner circa 1939

Exhibited: London, Leighton House, A Profound Secret: Burne-Jones and the Gaskells, 24th March to 30th May 2004

William Morris (1834-1896) is best known today as one of the most celebrated figures of the 19th century whose influence is still felt today. An artist, designer, author, poet and thinker, Morris spent much of his life fighting the consensus and seeking a fairer society. His design ethos was based around his championing the principle of handmade production over the increasing development of factory mass production, famously saying, Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

Morris and Burne-Jones met whilst undergraduates at Oxford and had quickly become inseparable. They were both romantics with a passion for the history, art and literature of the Middle Ages and both abandoned their intended path (Burne-Jones for the Church and Morris for architecture). In 1861, Morris and Burne-Jones, along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893) and others founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co, and until Morris’ death, Burne-Jones remained his most important, versatile and reliable collaborator. They remained friends until Morris’ death in 1896, although changing outlooks and ideas, did lead to

underlying tension at times, for example, Morris disliked Burne-Jones accepting a baronetcy in 1894 and Burne-Jones sometimes felt undervalued and underpaid as a supplier of material to Morris’ company.

Burne-Jones was a prolific caricaturist, producing humorous drawings on a wide range of subjects, from his friends and family to literary subjects and current events. By far the most represented figure in his caricatures was Burne-Jones himself, however, Morris was the next most regular object for the artist’s pen. Given their close working and personal relationship, this is perhaps unsurprising. Apparently for many years, the two men would meet every Sunday morning for breakfast at Burne-Jones’s house, The Grange, on North End Lane, Fulham. The two figures form almost exact opposites of each other; Morris is corpulent, vibrant, energetic and confident. BurneJones thin, scruffy, melancholic or uncertain, often overwhelmed. The majority of Morris studies date from the 1860s and 70s, however, the present sketches are rare late depictions, executed in the months before Morris’ death.

These two drawings were drawn for Helen Mary (May) Gaskell (1853-1940), daughter of Rev. David Melville, a canon of Worcester Cathedral. She was the last, but possibly the most important, of the young women with whom Burne-Jones formed close romantic, albeit platonic, relationships later in his life. They met in the early 1890s, through Frances Horner (1854-1940), who was probably the artist’s other most important female friend and despite the twenty-year age difference, Gaskell and Burne-Jones quickly became close, corresponding up to five times a day. Although Burne-Jones repeatedly asked May to destroy their correspondence, and May did get rid of some, she was unable to sacrifice them all and many of their letters remained with the family and were explored by May’s great grand-daughter, Josceline Dimbleby in A Profound Secret: May Gaskell, her Daughter Amy, and Edward Burne-Jones, 2004. The two shared similar artistic and literary interests and neither were content in their marriages. Burne-Jones’s relationship with his wife Georgie, even with her continuing loyalty and devotion, had never fully recovered from his affair with Maria Zambaco in the late 1860s. Whilst May and her husband Captain Henry Gaskell, despite the latter having travelled to the Middle East with William Holman Hunt, were temperamentally so different, that ultimately the couple lived separate lives.

57

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, A.R.A. (1833-1898)

Study of William Morris from behind

Black chalk on laid paper 7 by 8 cm., 2 ¾ by 3 in.

Provenance: May Gaskell (1853-1940); Given by her to the grandfather of the present owner circa 1939

Exhibited:

London, Leighton House, A Profound Secret: Burne-Jones and the Gaskells, 24th March to 30th May 2004

John Singer Sargent, R.A. (1856-1925)

Venice – Steps of a Palace

Signed and inscribed lower left: to my friend Rathbone / John S. Sargent

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour 25.5 by 36 cm., 10 by 14 in.

Provenance:

Given by the artist to William Gair Rathbone VII (1849-1919); Thence by descent

Exhibited:

London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of Works by the late John S Sargent, R.A., 1926, no.495;

Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, American Artists in Europe 1800-1900, 1976, no.56; Nottingham, University Art Gallery, Queen of Marble and Mud: the Anglo-American Vision of Venice: 1880-1910 : Works by Whistler, Sickert and Sargent, 20th February to 20th March 1978;

Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, Impressions of Venice from Turner to Monet, JulySeptember 1992, no.15

Literature:

R. Ormond and E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Venetian Figures and Landscapes, 1898-1913, Complete Paintings: Volume VI, New Haven and London, 2009, p.85, no.1040, illustrated

The steps depicted are at the base of Palazzo Contarini degli Scrigni e Corfu, a double-fronted palazzo just past the Accademia Bridge on the Grand Canal. Scamozzi added a classical palace to the existing structure in 1609 and the two facades stand side-by-side unaltered since Sargent’s time. The present picture depicts the base of the Scamozzi facade and the structure beyond is the neighbouring Palazzo Mocenigo-Gambara. It is typical of Sargent’s use of a very low viewpoint, at canal level, with water lapping at the base of the steps. It is painted looking southsouth-east down the Grand Canal in the direction of the Accademia Bridge.

This watercolour was given by Sargent to William Gair Rathbone VII (1849-1919) of the well-known trading house Rathbone’s originally based in Liverpool. Rathbone married the American Blanche Marie Luling (1856-1938) in 1877 while representing the firm in New York before returning to the London office in 1879. He was a close friend of John Singer Sargent and they shared a mutual taste in music, both helping to promote the careers of several young composers. He commissioned work from Delius and held recitals in his home, including by Francis Korbay and Percy Grainger. At one point Rathbone also owned a Sargent drawing of Korbay (now Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). He, his wife, children and daughter-in-law were all sketched by the artist and Rathbone built up a collection of Sargent’s watercolours through purchases and gifts from the artist.

Sargent preferred not to sell his watercolours and sketches, as he explained to Rathbone in 1904: ‘I feel rather ridiculous at not wanting to sell that sketch, especially when such a friend and such a knowing one lusts after it – But if my sketches are not here, how could I prove to myself and others that I am not a duffer…These sketches keep up my morale and I never sell them.’

Sargent and Rathbone met several times in Venice, including in 1903 and 1906. One such occasion was in February 1906, when Sargent wrote about a sketch he was working on, asking if he would like to ‘…see some more watercolours? If so come on Wednesday after 3, but by daylight – and bring Miss Rathbone if she will’. He wrote again saying, ‘As you always had a morbid liking for my watercolours, I consider that it would be “offenser le bon dieu” to allow you not to have some – so I am sending you a couple, which if I am not mistaken are among those you like, with a prayer that you will accept them.’

John Singer Sargent, R.A. (1856-1925)

The Statue of Fortune on the Dogana, Venice

Signed and inscribed upper left: to Elena Rathbone / John S. Sargent

Watercolour over pencil

48.3 by 34.3 cm., 19 by 13 ½ in.

Provenance:

Given by the artist to Elena Rathbone (1898-1964), daughter of William Gair Rathbone VII, on the occasion of her marriage to Bruce (later Sir Bruce) Richmond (1871-1964), 1913; Thence by descent

Exhibited:

London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of Works by the late John S Sargent, R.A., 1926, no.160;

Washington, National Gallery of Art, 2nd October 2022 to 2nd January 2023 and San Francisco, Fine Arts Museum, 11th February to 14th May 2023, Sargent in Spain, no.70

Literature:

W. Howe Downes, John S. Sargent: His Life and Work, London, 1926, p.272; W. Adelson, W.H. Gerdts, E. Kilmurray, R.M. Zorzi, R.Ormond and E. Oustinoff, Sargent’s Venice, New Haven and London, 2006, p.94, no.88, illustrated; R. Ormond and E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Venetian Figures and Landscapes, 1898-1913, Complete Paintings: Volume VI, New Haven and London, 2009, p.206, no.1150, illustrated

The present picture of the bronze statue of Fortune on a golden orb, supported by two bronze atlas figures, is an iconic feature of the Venetian skyline which is depicted here against a billowing sky and without the sturdy structure below of the Dogana below.

Sargent painted another version of this view which is more studied architecturally and less spontaneous in feel, which is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

See note to no.58 for more on William Gair Rathbone VII (1849-1919), the father of the first owner of this watercolour.

John Singer Sargent, R.A. (1856-1925)

The Simplon Pass, Switzerland

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour 47 by 64.8 cm., 18 ½ by 23 ½ in.

Provenance:

Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 24th July1925, lot 2, bt. Thomson; David Croal Thomson, London (1855-1930); Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert H. Spender-Clay (1875-1937) and Pauline Spender-Clay (1880-1972); Thence by descent

Exhibited:

London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of Works by the late John S Sargent, R.A., 1926, no.149, p.25

Literature:

William Howe Downes, John S. Sargent: His Life and Work, London, 1926, p.317; R. Ormond and E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1908-1913, Complete Paintings: Volume VIII, New Haven and London, 2014, p.173, 371, no.1579, illustrated

The view depicted is the Hubschhorn (right) and the Kaltwasser Glacier to the east of the Simplon Pass in Switzerland. Sargent made several trips to the Alps between 1908 and 1912 and painted this view on a number of occasions. In the summer of 1910, the year the present picture was painted, Sargent and a party of friends, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, stayed at the Hotel Bellevue on the Simplon Pass. One companion, the artist Adrian Stokes, wrote at length about their visit to the Simplon, stating about Sargent that ‘though he most likely considered himself to be on a holiday his industry was constant. He also noted that the rapidity and

directness with which he worked was amazing.’ In this particular watercolour, Sargent contrasts the earthy green of the hillock in the foreground with the snowcovered mountains behind, using the white of the paper to help form the clouds and snow.

The Simplon was one of five watercolours by Sargent purchased in 1925 by Colonel Herbert H. Spender-Clay and his wife, Pauline Astor. Pauline Astor was born in New York, the daughter of William Waldorf Astor and Mary Dahlgreen Paul of Philadelphia. The Astors moved to London in 1891 and established themselves in English society by buying two grand houses, Cliveden House and Hever Castle. When Pauline’s mother died in 1894, Pauline assumed the role of hostess.

The Spender-Clays lived at Ford Manor, Lingfield, Surrey and in London. They had three daughters, one of whom married Sir David Bowes-Lyon, the brother of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and became Lady Bowes-Lyon. The other married Sir Philip Bouverie Bowyer Nichols, a British diplomat and Ambassador, and became Lady Nichols. The third daughter died in infancy.

61

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961)

Study of a Lady, Zaragoza, Spain

Signed with initials and inscribed lower centre: Saragossa VB Pencil on wove watermarked paper 14.3 by 9 cm., 5 ½ by 3 ½ in.

Provenance:

By descent to the artist’s daughter Angelica Garnett (1918-2012); Given by her to the previous owner

Vanessa Bell was the daughter of Sir Leslie and Julia Stephen and grew up in London. On the death of her father in 1904 she moved to Gordon Square, Bloomsbury with her sister Virginia Woolf. The social events they held there led to the formation of what was later dubbed the ‘Bloomsbury Group.’ In 1907

Vanessa married the writer Clive Bell (1881-1964) and prior to the First World War they moved to Charleston Farmhouse near Firle in Sussex with her on-off lover the artist Duncan Grant (1885-1978).

As an artist she was enthused by Roger Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibitions in 1910 and 1912 and imitated their bright earthy colours. She exhibited at the New English Art Club in 1909 and her first solo exhibition was at the Omega Workshop in 1916. She became known for her strong highly coloured portraits and also designed the dust jackets for her sister Virginia Woolf’s books.

This drawing originates from a sketchbook used on the artist’s trip to Spain with Duncan Grant in May and June 1923. There they met up with Roger Fry and visited Madrid and Toledo as well as Zaragoza.

Violet Manners, Duchess of Rutland (1856-1937)

Portrait of the Artist's Daughter, Lady Diana Cooper

Inscribed lower left: “Off to Philadelphia”/in train Feb, 1924

Pencil on laid paper

11.1 by 8.8 cm., 4 ¼ by 3 ½ in.

Marion Margaret Violet Lindsay, granddaughter of 24th Earl of Crawford, was widely regarded as one of the most striking beauties of her day. In 1882, she married Henry Manners, who became Marquess of Granby, before succeeding as 8th Duke of Rutland in 1906. She and her husband however, moved in very different circles: he was politically conservative, aesthetically disinterested and interested in country pursuits, especially hunting. Violet, on the other hand was bohemian, intellectual and determined to be taken seriously as an artist. She became a leading member of The Souls, a loosely knit social group of intellectual aristocrats which formed in the 1870s. The group were known for their shared avant-garde artistic taste and cultural sophistication. Other members included Arthur Balfour, George Curzon, Alfred Lyttelton, Margot Asquith and Henry Cust (reputedly the father of her third daughter, Diana).

A talented draughtswoman and sculptor, Violet was largely self-taught and encouraged by her family in her passion. She exhibited at the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery and Fine Art Society as well as in France and America. She continued to work and exhibit until a month before her death in November 1937.

The present portrait is of her youngest daughter, Lady Diana Manners. Another great wit and beauty, Diana was one of the most painted and photographed women of her day. In 1919 she married the diplomat, Duff Cooper (later Viscount Norwich) and partly in order to finance her husband’s political career she turned to the stage. The present work depicts Lady Diana Cooper on a train to Philadelphia during her 1924 North American revival of Karl Vollmoller’s, The Miracle. The play performed entirely without words, was originally produced by C B Cochran at Olympia, London in 1911, with Diana taking the role of the Madonna. It was revived in New York in 1924 and again at the Lyceum Theatre in 1932 with costumes by Oliver Messel. The revival was extremely successful and toured for two years in the Britain and abroad.

Index

B Page Bell, Vanessa 76

Burne-Jones, Sir Edward Coley, A.R.A. 68-69

C

Callow, William, R.W.S. 28, 30 Constable, John, R.A. 16 Cristall, Joshua 18

D Devis, Anthony 9

F Fripp, George Arthur, R.W.S. 23 Fuseli, Henry, Circle of, R.A. 14

G Girtin, Thomas 10

H Hamilton, Hugh Douglas 5 Hayter, Sir George 26 Hunt, William Henry, O.W.S. 34-43

J Page Jackson, Samuel 21-22

L Lear, Edward 44-52

Leighton, Lord Frederic, P.R.A. 66 Long, Amelia, Lady Farnborough 15

M Manners, Violet, Duchess of Rutland 77

O Oliver, Isaac 2

P Palmer, Samuel 24

Pars, William, A.R.A. 8 Prout, Samuel, O.W.S. 29

R Roberts, David, R.A. 31

Roberts, James 32

Rosse, Susannah-Penelope 4

Rowlandson, Thomas 6-7

Ruskin, John 54-65

Guy Peppiatt Fine Art Ltd Riverwide House, 6 Mason’s Yard Duke Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6BU

Tel: +44 (0) 7956 968 284 guy@peppiattfineart.co.uk www.peppiattfineart.co.uk

S Page

Sargent, John Singer, R.A. 70-75

Shepherd, George Sidney 27

T Turner, Joseph Mallord William, R.A. 12

V Varley, Cornelius 20 Varley, John 19

W Watts, James Thomas 53

Opposite: (45) John Ruskin (1819-1900) The Valley of La Grande Chartreuse, France

Design: sarahagarwood@outlook.com

GUY PEPPIATT FINE ART

Riverwide House, 6 Mason’s Yard, Duke Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6BU