catalogue - Guy Peppiatt Fine Art

Transcription

20634 GP & SO Catalogue_v5 03/11/2011 13:01 Page 1
GUY PEPPIATT FINE ART
STEPHEN ONGPIN FINE ART
ONE HUNDRED
DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS
dating from the 16th century to the present day
WINTER CATALOGUE
2011–2012
to be exhibited at
Riverwide House
6 Mason’s Yard
Duke Street, St. James’s
London SW1Y 6BU
Stephen Ongpin Fine Art
Tel.+44 (0) 20 7930 8813
or + 44 (0)7710 328 627
[email protected]
www.stephenongpin.com
Guy Peppiatt Fine Art
Tel.+44 (0) 20 7930 3839
or +44 (0)7956 968 284
[email protected]
www.peppiattfineart.co.uk
1
We are delighted to present our fourth annual Winter catalogue of One Hundred Drawings and
Watercolours. By tradition the areas of Old Master drawings, early British drawings and watercolours,
and 19th and 20th century drawings, have been regarded as separate fields, each with their own
enthusiasts and collectors, as well as auctions and exhibitions. Part of the purpose of this catalogue,
and indeed the aim of our shared gallery, is to blur the distinction between these collecting areas. A
glance at the works included in this catalogue will, we hope, show that a good drawing or
watercolour is always worthy of attention, whoever the artist and whatever the date.
This catalogue includes a wide range of British and European drawings and watercolours, placed
more or less in chronological order, ranging in date from the early 16th century to the present day.
As a glance at the enclosed price list will show, the prices of the drawings are equally broad in scope
– from under £1,000 to around £10,000 – with a large number of interesting works at the lower
end of this range. Drawings and watercolours by well-established artists can be very affordable, and
interesting works by minor or little-known artists especially so. There is much in this catalogue for
the novice collector, as well as for the more experienced connoisseur or curator.
Our respective individual catalogues of more significant drawings will be issued in March and May
2012, and will each be accompanied by exhibitions at our gallery. In the meantime, we are delighted
to present this Winter catalogue of more moderately priced works. We hope you find something in
it to interest you, and look forward to greeting you at the gallery over the coming months.
Guy Peppiatt
Stephen Ongpin
Lara Smith-Bosanquet
The following catalogue contains a combination of drawings from the stock of Stephen Ongpin Fine Art (SOFA)
and Guy Peppiatt Fine Art (GPFA). Those of the former are marked SOFA and the latter GPFA at the top of
each page; please direct any enquiries as appropriate.
Only a brief account of each drawing is given in the catalogue. Further information on most of the drawings,
as well as more complete biographical information on the artists, is available on request.
The drawings are available for viewing from receipt of the catalogue. A price list is included.
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SOFA
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Attributed to FEDERICO ZUCCARO
Sant’Angelo in Vado 1543–1609 Ancona
recorded in the inventory of Zuccaro’s studio after his
death. The contents of these albums comprised, for the
most part, copies after the work of earlier artists that
Zuccaro saw on his extensive travels throughout Italy. The
albums also included, however, a number of other types of
drawings – landscapes, studies of animals, genre subjects,
head studies and informal portraits – all in red and black
chalk and usually of small dimensions. Most of these
drawings cannot be specifically related to finished paintings
by the artist, and seem to have been done for his own
pleasure.
Two Studies of a Baby
Red and black chalk
175 x 119 mm., 6 7/ 8 x 4 5/ 8 in.
This charming drawing is close in style to a handful of
intimate studies of babies and young children, drawn in
both black and red chalk, by Federico Zuccaro. These
studies may in turn be grouped with a large number of
drawings, generally executed in a combination of black and
red chalks, which were pasted into albums and are
Attributions to Francesco Vanni (1563–1610) and
Cristofano Allori (1577–1621) have also been suggested for
the present sheet.
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SOFA
2
Attributed to STEFANO DELLA BELLA
Florence 1610–1664 Florence
seems to have often worked outdoors, and his lively
drawings display a keen observation of country life and
pursuits. The artist filled several sketchbooks with scenes of
people, buildings and landscapes; all drawn on the spot and
used as a stock of images and motifs for both his etchings
and more finished drawings.
Landscape with the Ruins of the Grotto of Egeria, Rome
Pen and brown ink and grey wash, laid down and
mounted onto a large album page, with a grey wash
border
A sketch of a fountain in front of two arches and
with temples beyond in pen and brown ink on the
verso
Inscribed Fontaine de la Nymphe Egerie. at the upper
left and numbered 49 on the album sheet
Further inscribed Bartolomeus on the verso
138 x 185 mm., 5 3/ 8 x 7 1/ 4 in.
Under the patronage of the Medici, Della Bella was sent to
Rome in 1633. The young artist was to spend a total of six
years living and working in the city, living in the Medici palace
and making drawings after antiquities and Renaissance
masters, as well as numerous landscapes, vedute and scenes
of everyday life and festivities.
This is a view of the so-called grotto of the nymph Egeria (in
actual fact part of the estate of the suburban villa of Herodus
Atticus), near the Via Appia to the southeast of Rome. The
natural grotto was developed into a man-made arched
interior, with a statue of Egeria set in a niche in the apse,
and the walls faced with mosaics and marble.
A talented and prolific printmaker and draughtsman, Stefano
della Bella produced countless works of considerable
energy and inventiveness, with an oeuvre numbering over a
thousand etchings, and many times more drawings. He
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SOFA
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JACOB VAN DER ULFT
Gorkum (Gorinchem) 1627–1689 Noordwijk
Houbraken states definitively that he did not, and claims that
his Roman views were based on the work of other artists.
Certainly, van der Ulft was profoundly influenced by the
work of another amateur artist, Jan de Bisschop (16281671), whose drawings approach his own in both style and
handling. An album of forty-three landscape drawings by
both Jacob van der Ulft and Jan de Bisschop, mostly views
in or around Rome, is in the collection of the Dukes of
Devonshire at Chatsworth. Another album of Roman views
by van der Ulft is in the Institut Néerlandais in Paris.
Figures in an Italianate Landscape
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, within a
drawn circle
Signed and dated Jac: vander Ulft Fe: 1686. in the
lower left and lower right margins
172 x 170 mm., 6 3/ 4 x 6 5/ 8 in.
The present sheet belongs with a small and distinctive group
of circular landscape drawings by Jacob van der Ulft, all of
approximately the same dimensions. Examples are in the
collections of the British Museum, the Musées Royaux des
Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the
Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, MA, and elsewhere. With
its fluid, bold use of brown wash punctuated by white
highlights where the paper has been left to show through,
the drawing displays the strong influence of Jan de Bisschop
on van der Ulft.
Much of Jacob van der Ulft’s surviving painted and drawn
oeuvre is made up of Italianate landscapes, or antique
Roman cityscapes and port scenes crowded with figures.
He seems to have been an amateur artist and was quite
possibly self-taught, as no guild membership is recorded.
Although there are many quite specific views of Rome
by the hand of the artist, many of which are inscribed
and dated, it remains unclear whether van der Ulft ever
actually visited Italy. The contemporary biographer Arnold
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GPFA
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WILLIAM HOARE OF BATH, R.A.
Eye, Suffolk 1707–1792 Bath
Provenance:
Sir Henry Duff Gordon (1866–1953)
Hoare was a portrait painter in oil and pastel who was in
Bath by 1739 and was the first fashionable and successful
portrait painter to settle there. He produced a number of
these chalk portrait drawings, which are mainly of his family
and friends.
a. Study of a Woman writing
Black chalk on laid paper with a Pro Patria
watermark
150 x 163 mm., 5 3/ 4 x 6 1/ 4 in.
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GPFA
b. Study of a Woman seated in a Chair
Black and white chalk on buff paper
Maximum size 267 x 225 mm., 10 1/ 2 x 8 3/ 4 in.
Provenance:
Sir Henry Duff Gordon (1866–1953)
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GPFA
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RICHARD COSWAY, R.A.
Oakford, Devon 1740–1821 Edgware
Provenance:
Maria Cosway (1760–1838), Lodi, Italy
By descent until bought by an Italian dealer, his sale,
Christie’s, 1st June 1896, sold for £10.10s
Private Collection, France
Cupid unmasking False Love
Signed on original washline mount: Rich.d Cosway
R.A. Primarius Pictor Sereness.ma Wallia Princip..
Del.t 1779
Pen and brown ink on laid paper
Sheet 233 x 194 mm., 9 x 7 1/ 2 in.
Literature:
George C. Williamson, Richard Cosway R.A., 1897, ill.
opp. p.30 and p.87
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GPFA
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GEORGE ROMNEY
Dalton-in-Furness 1734–1802 Kendal
This belongs to a group of drawings of this subject by
Romney datable stylistically to circa 1792–3. Others from
the group are in the Fitzwilliam Museum (M.D. 38a), the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (see George Romney in
Canada, exhibition catalogue, 1986, no. 38, ill.), in an album
in the Chicago Art Institute and recorded in the collection of
Mr and Mrs J.D. Dilworth Jr (see Patricia Milne-Henderson,
The Drawings of George Romney, 1962, pl. XXXIII).
The Descent from the Cross
Pencil on buff paper
164 x 196 mm., 6 1/ 4 x 7 3/ 4 in.
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SOFA
a.
Above:
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FRENCH SCHOOL (‘J. N. d. B.’)
1791
a. Classical Ruins with Men Demolishing a Wall
Facing page:
b. Classical Ruins with Men Excavating a Statue
Watercolour and gouache, over an underdrawing in
pencil, within framing lines in black ink
Signed and dated J.N.d.B. 1791 in white gouache at
the lower right
244 x 184 mm., 9 5/ 8 x 7 1/ 4 in. [image]
265 x 204 mm., 10 3/ 8 x 8 in. [sheet]
Watercolour and gouache, over an underdrawing in
pencil, within framing lines in black ink
Signed and dated J.N.d.B. 1791 in white gouache at
the lower right
246 x 196 mm., 9 3/ 4 x 7 3/ 4 in. [image]
267 x 218 mm., 10 1/ 2 x 8 5/ 8 in. [sheet]
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SOFA
b.
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GPFA
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK
Blenheim 1734–1808
days later. They moved in court circles and Lady Diana’s
closest friends were the Countesses of Pembroke and
Spencer and the Duchess of Devonshire.
Children Playing with a Dove
After her husband’s death, she moved into Devonshire
Cottage in Richmond. She was well known for her drawings
of children and infant cupids and bacchantes, some of which
were engraved by Bartolozzi, and she also produced
designs for Wedgwood pottery. Horace Walpole was a
great admirer of her work and built a room at Strawberry
Hill to house her drawings. Examples of her work are in the
V. & A., the Royal Collection and the British Museum. For a
similar drawing entitled ‘Cupids with Doves’, see Beatrice
Erskine, Lady Diana Beauclerk, her Life and Work, 1903, p.xii.
Watercolour over traces of pencil
148 x 189 mm., 5 3/ 4 x 7 1/ 4 in.
Lady Beauclerk was born Lady Diana Spencer and was the
eldest daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of
Marlborough. She grew up at Blenheim Palace and made
copies of the pictures there from a young age. In 1757 she
married the 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke but divorced him in
1768 and married Topham Beauclerk (1739–1780) two
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SOFA
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GIUSEPPE BERNARDINO BISON
Palmanova 1762–1844 Milan
Scala and other theatres. Although his career lasted well into
the 19th century, his style invariably retains something of
the flavour of the previous century; indeed, his work has
been aptly described by one recent scholar as ‘a last late
flowering of the Venetian Settecento’.
Two Heads of Young Women
Pen and brown ink and brown wash
A small sketch of the head of a young woman in pen
on the verso
Signed Bison at the lower left, and initialled B on the
verso
144 x 174 mm., 5 5/ 8 x 6 7/ 8 in.
Bison was an accomplished draughtsman, whose earliest
works show the Venetian influence of Giambattista Tiepolo
and Francesco Guardi, while his later drawings tend towards
Neoclassicism. His drawings encompass a wide and varied
range of subjects, from religious narratives to genre scenes,
landscape capricci, and stage and ornament designs. Few of
Bison’s drawings, however, were intended as preparatory
studies for paintings, and he produced a large number of
drawings as independent works of art for sale. Bison’s
preferred medium was pen and ink, applied in a fluid
manner and usually combined with rich tonal washes, of
which this drawing is a fine example. Similar studies of heads
appear throughout the artist’s oeuvre.
Giuseppe Bernardino Bison received his artistic training in
Venice, and spent the early part of his career working as a
fresco painter in villas and palaces around the Veneto. In the
latter half of his career he lived and worked in Trieste and
Milan, active as both a decorative fresco painter and a
scenographer, producing stage designs for the Teatro alla
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GPFA
10
HUGH DOUGLAS HAMILTON
Dublin 1740–1808 Dublin
Charlotte Musgrave (1751–1818) was the daughter of Sir
Philip Musgrave, 6th Bt., and his wife Jane Turton. She
married the Reverend Charles Mordaunt, Rector of
Massingham, the son of Sir Charles Mordaunt, 6th Bt., in
1774. She was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1774–75
(see David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds – A Complete
Catalogue of his Paintings, 2000, no.1290, p.342).
Portrait of Miss Charlotte Musgrave
Head and shoulders
Signed lower right: Hamilton/delin.t 1772
Pastel over pencil on laid paper, oval
230 x 190 mm., 9 x 7 1/ 4 in.
Hugh Douglas Hamilton was born in Dublin and studied at
the Royal Dublin Society from 1750 until 1756 until moving
to London and finding success as a portrait painter in pastel
and oil. In 1778 he went to Rome returning to Dublin in
1792.
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GPFA
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JOHN DOWNMAN, A.R.A.
Ruabon, Wales 1750–1824 Wrexham
which was turned into a film The Duchess, starring Keira
Knightley. This previously unrecorded portrait study of
Georgiana relates to Downman’s 1784 portrait of the
Duchess with Lady Elizabeth Foster, drawn when she was
twenty-seven, the original of which is at Ickworth House.
Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
Half-length
Watercolour, oval
200 x 151 mm., 7 3/ 4 x 6 in.
For a print of the picture, see G.C. Williamson, John
Downman, A.R.A., 1907, ill. p.19. Another study of the
Duchess relating to this portrait was sold at the Coates sale
at Sotheby’s on 15th February 1922, lot 1.
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806) was a
celebrated beauty, fashion icon and socialite and the wife of
the 5th Duke of Devonshire. For more on her life, see
Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, 1998
We are grateful to Charles Noble, the Curator at
Chatsworth House, for confirming the identity of the sitter.
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SOFA
12
NICOLAS II HUET
Paris c.1770–1828 Paris
draughtsman, and in 1804 was appointed painter to the
Muséum d’Histore Naturelle and to the Ménagerie of the
Empress Josephine, who was an avid collector of animal,
bird and plant specimens. He also took part in Napoleon’s
scientific and artistic expedition to Egypt between 1798 and
1801. Huet continued to exhibit at the Salons until 1827,
showing mainly drawings and watercolours of animals. He
also painted a series of 246 elaborate drawings on vellum –
studies of mammals, reptiles, birds, insects and sea life – for
the library of the Muséum d’Histore Naturelle.
A Kudu
Watercolour, with touches of white heightening
118 x 163 mm., 4 5/ 8 x 6 3/ 8 in.
Born into a family of artists, Nicolas Huet was the eldest son
and pupil of Jean-Baptiste Huet and the grandson of the
animalier Nicolas Huet the Elder, and like both of them
specialized in depictions of animals. The young Nicolas first
exhibited in 1788 at the Exposition de la Jeunesse, showing
a still life, and made his Salon debut in 1802 with several
animal pictures. A gifted watercolourist and engraver, Huet
developed a particular reputation as a natural history
The present sheet would appear to depict a male kudu, a
species of antelope native to Southern and Eastern Africa.
Huet may have either studied the animal at the Empress’s
Ménagerie, or worked from a stuffed specimen in the
collections of the Muséum d’Histore Naturelle.
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SOFA
13
FRENCH SCHOOL
Circa 1800
The Card Players
Pencil, pen and brown ink and brown wash
Inscribed joueur(?) amis(?) / 4 croupier(?) de cadre
rachiel(?) / Cadre Rachiel(?)/ thermometre on the verso
Further inscribed, in a different hand, attribué à
Isabey père on the verso
136 x 173 mm., 5 3/ 8 x 6 3/ 4 in.
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GPFA
14
RICHARD WESTALL, R.A.
Hertford 1765–1836 London
Exhibited:
London, Appleby Brothers, Early English Watercolours,
Oct. – Nov. 1961, no.105
New York, The Drawing Shop, English Drawings and
Watercolours, Oct. – Nov. 1962, no.32
The Three Witches appearing to Macbeth and
Banquo
This shows the Three Witches appearing to Macbeth and
Banquo on the heath in Act I, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s play.
It may be an unused design for Boydell’s illustrated edition
of Shakespeare’s plays, for which Westall produced a
number of illustrations, including two subjects from Macbeth
in the late 1790s.
Watercolour heightened with bodycolour and
scratching out
269 x 202 mm., 10 1/ 2 x 8 in.
Provenance (as Fuseli):
Canon Smythe, Sussex
Appleby Brothers, London, November 1961
Bernard Black Gallery
Castellane Gallery
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GPFA
15
SIR ROBERT KERR PORTER
Durham 1777–1842 St Petersburg
Porter was the son of an Army surgeon and brought up in
Edinburgh. In 1790 he entered the Royal Academy schools
and quickly achieved success as a painter of large scale battle
scenes. In 1804 he went to Russia as Historical Painter to
the Tsar where he fell in love with a Russian princess, the
daughter of Prince Theodor von Scherbatoff whom he
eventually married in 1812. He travelled extensively
through Scandinavia, the Middle East and accompanied Sir
John Moore on his Corunna campaign during the Peninsular
War. He published various books and was British Consul to
Venezuela from 1826 until 1841.
Russian Cavalry
Signed lower right with initials and dated 1810
Pen and black ink and watercolour
248 x 304 mm., 9 3/ 4 x 12 in.
Provenance:
By descent in the Burney Family until 2011
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GPFA
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CIRCLE OF PAUL SANDBY, R.A.
Nottingham 1731–1809 London
Exhibited:
On loan to Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, 1982
Previously fully attributed to Sandby, this is by a close
follower. It may be by one of his many military pupils at the
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich where he taught from
1768 until 1796.
On the Road to Dover
Pen and grey ink and watercolour on Whatman laid
paper
365 x 523 mm., 14 1/ 4 x 20 1/ 2 in.
Provenance:
Mr and Mrs John Fenwick
20
GPFA
17
JOSEPH FARINGTON, R.A.
Leigh 1747–1821 Disbury
This drawing dates from Farington’s tour of north-west
England in the summer of 1786. A view of the same house,
also dated 10th September is in the Whitworth Art Gallery,
University of Manchester (see Joseph Farington –
Watercolours and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, 1977,
p.43, no.30, ill. p.85). A view of Lancaster from this tour,
dated August 1786, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge (op. cit., no.23) and a view ‘At Nunnery in
Cumberland’, dated 20th August, was sold at Sotheby’s on
6th June 2007, lot 179 for £6,240.
Study of a Manor House
Signed lower left: Joseph Farington/Sept.r 10th 1786
Pen and brown ink and watercolour with original
pen and ink mount
192 x 246 mm., 9 x 14 3/ 4 in.
Provenance:
Ruskin Gallery, Stratford-upon-Avon
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GPFA
18
JOHN NIXON
1760–1818 Ryde
The George Inn, visible to the left, is the original pilgrim’s Inn
of Glastonbury Abbey. Pevsner described it as ‘one of the
most sumptuous of the small number of surviving inns
before the Reformation.’ Beyond is the Parish church of St.
John’s dating from the fifteenth century with its tall west
tower.
The High St, Glastonbury
Inscribed lower left: A Bath Parson/Mother Nash
Pen and grey and brown ink and watercolour over
pencil, squared
303 x 460 mm., 113/ 4 x 18 in.
Nixon was an amateur artist who was in business in London
with his brother Richard as an Irish merchant. He travelled
extensively on sketching tours including several trips to
Ireland in the 1780s and 1790s often in the company of
other artists such as Francis Grose or Thomas Rowlandson.
This is a later work and clearly show the influence of
Rowlandson under whose tutelage he became ‘a very
professional amateur indeed’ (Huon Mallalieu, Dictionary of
British Watercolour Artists, 2002, vol. II, p.77).
Exhibited:
Probably London, Royal Academy, 1812, no.546 as ‘The
High St at Glastonbury, with a view of the Abbot’s inn, the
Conduit, etc.’
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GPFA
19
ENGLISH SCHOOL
Circa 1790
Provenance:
Dover Street Arts Club, London
Traditionally attributed to Robert Dighton (1751–1814), this
may be attributable to William Mason (1724–1797) who
produced a number of horse-racing scenes in the late 18th
century, several of which were engraved.
At the Races
Pen and grey ink and watercolour on laid paper with
Whatman watermark
414 x 726 mm., 16 1/ 4 x 28 1/ 2 in.
23
GPFA
20
MOSES GRIFFITH
Caernarvonshire 1747–1819
21
THOMAS TUDOR
Monmouth 1785–1855 Wyesham
Llandegai Church and Bridge, Carnarvonshire, North
Wales
a. Portland Island from the Chesil Bank
Inscribed with title lower right: Clifton and
numbered 24
Pen and brown ink and brown wash heightened
with scratching out
149 x 242 mm., 5 3/ 4 x 9 1/ 2 in.
Inscribed verso: Llandegai Church & Bridge
Pen and brown ink and watercolour over pencil on
laid paper
228 x 298 mm., 9 x 113/ 4 in.
Provenance:
By descent from the artist until with Walker Galleries, 1961
Llandegai lies 13/ 4 miles south-east of Bangor. In the far right
distance Penrhyn Castle is just visible in the trees. At this
date it was still a medieval manor house before being
transformed into a 19th century neo-Norman fantasy castle
by the architect Thomas Hopper in 1827 by another
member of the Pennant family, George Dawkins Pennant.
Tudor was born in Monmouth, the son of Owen Tudor, a
bookseller. He started drawing at a young age providing
plans and drawings of local houses and first exhibited at the
24
GPFA
a.
b.
b. A Pass in the Barmouth Road, Cader Idris in the
distance
Royal Academy in 1809. He continued exhibiting until 1819
but became a land agent, building Tudor House at
Wyesham near Monmouth where he lived for the rest of
his life. He was also a collector of paintings and owned
works by Reynolds, Van Dyck and Turner whose studio his
diary records he visited in June 1847.
Inscribed with title lower left
Brown washes and black chalk heightened with
scratching out
247 x 313 mm., 9 3/ 4 x 12 1/ 4 in.
25
GPFA
22
THOMAS LEESON ROWBOTHAM
Bath 1782–1853 Camberwell
23
PANCRACE BESSA
Paris 1772–1846 Ecouen
Harlech Castle, Wales
Drawing for the Herbier général de l’amateur: A
Roseleaf Bramble (Rubus Rosifolius)
Inscribed lower right: Harlech
Watercolour over pencil heightened with white on
buff paper
228 x 300 mm., 9 x 113/ 4 in.
Watercolour and gouache, over a pencil
underdrawing, heightened with gum arabic on
vellum
Signed P. Bessa in the lower left margin
268 x 193 mm., 10 1/ 2 x 7 5/ 8 in. [sheet]
Rowbotham was born in Bath and was working there as a
drawing master in 1811 before moving to Dublin. By 1825
he was in Bristol where he remained for a decade and many
of his topographical views of the city are in Bristol City Art
Gallery. In 1835 he moved to London where he was
appointed drawing master at the Royal Naval School in
New Cross.
Provenance:
Commissioned by Charles X, King of France
His daughter-in-law, the Duchesse de Berri, by 1826
Her sister, Teresa Cristina, later Empress Consort of
Brazil, Rio de Janeiro
Given to João Barbosa Rodrigues, Rio de Janeiro
Thence by descent, until sold at auction in Brazil c.1922
Paulo Campos-Porto, Rio de Janeiro
His sale, Beverly Hills, Lewis S. Hart Gallery, 17
November 1947
26
SOFA
Literature:
Jean-Claude-Michel Mordant de Launay and Jean-LouisAuguste Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, Herbier général de
l’amateur, contenant la description, l’histoire, les propriétés
et la culture des végétaux utiles et agréables, Vol.V, Paris,
1821, pl.352
artist worked on the series until 1827. Bessa’s beautiful
watercolours were superbly reproduced for the book, in
the form of hand-coloured engravings by various
printmakers. The artist’s original watercolours for the
Herbier général de l’amateur remained together for over
120 years, and were shown as a group in exhibitions held
in Rio de Janeiro, Boston, San Francisco and New York,
before finally being dispersed at auction in 1947.
One the leading painters of flowers and fruit in the first half
of the 19th century, Pancrace Bessa’s most important
commission was for a series of 572 watercolours on vellum
for Mordant de Launay’s Herbier général de l’amateur,
commissioned by Charles X, King of France. The most
significant French flower periodical of the day and published
in eight volumes, the project was begun in 1816 and the
Only rarely cultivated, the Roseleaf bramble (Rubus
Rosifolius) is a tropical plant with a white flower and edible
fruit. It is found abundantly in the Brazilian rainforest and
also in the Himalayas, East Asia and Australia.
27
SOFA
a.
24
JEAN-MICHEL CELS
The Hague 1819–1894 Brussels
The 19th century Belgian artist Jean-Michel Cels remains
little known today. He was the son and pupil of the
Neoclassical painter Cornelis Cels, director of the Académie
de Tournai, and also studied with the landscape painter
Pierre Jean Hellemans. The younger Cels must have
learned the practice of making plein-air oil sketches from his
father, who is known to have made such studies during the
seven years he spent living and working in Italy early in his
career.
a. Fallen Tree Trunks on a Forest Floor
Oil on paper
Signed, dated and inscribed Etude d’après na[ture]
JM Cels 1840 – environs de Bruxelles on the verso
192 x 362 mm., 7 5/ 8 x 14 1/ 4 in.
These two landscape sketches are part of a group of
drawings and oil sketches by Jean-Michel Cels that appeared
on the art market in London in 1997. Two oil sketches by
Cels, executed in oils on paper and sharing the same
provenance as the present sheet, are in the collection of
the National Gallery in London; one depicts a study of
clouds and the other a study of trees in a ravine. Another oil
sketch study of clouds and sky by Cels is in the Thaw
Collection at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.
b. A Clearing at the Edge of a Wood
Oil on paper, laid down on canvas
Signed, dated and inscribed Chateau de Meisse près
Bruxelles / JM Cels 7bre 1840 on the verso
237 x 182 mm., 9 5/ 8 x 7 1/ 8 in.
Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium, c.1950
Sale, London, Christie’s, 16 April 1997, lot 311
Kate de Rothschild, London.
According to the inscription on the verso of Fallen Tree
Trunks on a Forest Floor, this vibrant oil sketch was painted in
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b.
1840 on the outskirts of Brussels. In painting works such as
this, Cels may have been aware of the pioneering plein-air
painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes’s statement that artists
should make oil sketches of trees, to study the bark and the
form of the tree closely. The artist’s inscription on the
reverse of A Clearing at the Edge of a Wood notes that the
work was painted in September 1840 at Meise, on the
northern of Brussels; the town is now home to the National
Botanic Garden of Belgium.
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25
JOHN RUBENS SMITH
London 1775–1849 New York
the Royal Academy between 1796 and 1811, mainly
portraits but also views of Reculver, Margate Pier and
Brighton. In 1806 he emigrated to the USA and set up
successful drawing schools in Boston, New York and
Philadelphia.
East View of Margate Pier from Cliff
Inscribed with the title on part of original mount
Watercolour over pencil on two sheets of paper
joined
213 x 321 mm., 8 1/ 4 x 12 1/ 2 in.
Topographical watercolours by him are in the Library of
Congress, the Metropolitan Museum, New York and the
National Gallery of Art, Washington. A panorama of
Margate Harbour by Smith dated 1803 was with Martyn
Gregory (see Huon Mallalieu, The Dictionary of British
Watercolour Artists up to 1920, 1979, vol. II, p.512, ill.) and
a panorama of Ramsgate was with Guy Peppiatt Fine Art
(summer catalogue 2011, no.26).
This is a view looking west across Margate Harbour from
the site of the new Turner Contemporary Museum. The
towers of Reculver church are visible in the distance.
Smith was born in London, the son of the portraitist and
engraver John Raphael Smith (1752–1812). He exhibited at
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26
PAUL SANDBY, R.A.
Nottingham 1731–1809 London
Keeper’s Lodge, Easton Park are in the Victoria and Albert
Musem (Dyce 746) and the British Museum
(1904,0819.23), which also has a ‘design for a window
blind, Easton Park’, dated 1809.
Page’s Farm, Easton Park, Essex
The manor and estates of Little Easton, later Easton Park,
were granted to Henry Maynard, Lord Burleigh’s private
secretary in 1590. He was knighted in 1603. The house,
Easton Park, was built in 1597 and burnt down in 1847
when it was rebuilt by Hopper. At the date of the present
work, Easton Lodge was in the possession of Charles,
Viscount Maynard (1752–1824) who inherited the peerage
in 1775 and succeeded his father as 5th Baronet in 1792.
He married but had no children so the estate was inherited
by his nephew.
Watercolour and bodycolour over pencil
200 x 274 mm., 7 3/ 4 x 10 3/ 4 in.
Sandby is often described as ‘the Father of English
watercolour painting’ as he was probably the first British
artist in the eighteenth century to work commercially in the
medium. This is one of two pictures of this size exhibited by
Sandby at the British Institution in 1808 entitled ‘Part of
Page’s Farm, near Easton Park, Essex’ (no.271) or ‘Page’s
Farm, Easton Park, Essex, from the West.’ Views of the
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27
FRANÇOIS BONVIN
Vaugirard 1817–1887 Saint Germain-en-Laye
François Bonvin rose to become one of the leaders of a
group of Realist painters in 19th century France who found
inspiration in subjects and scenes taken from contemporary
urban life. He earned a particular reputation as a painter of
genre and interior scenes and still-life subjects, although his
modern reputation rests largely on his drawings. Signed and
dated 1850, this is a fine and typical example of the sort of
finished drawing that Bonvin would have intended for sale.
Intimate studies of women sewing appear occasionally in
Bonvin’s oeuvre, and it may be noted that the artist’s
mother, who died when he was just four years old, was a
seamstress, while his stepmother ran a sewing workshop
in his native town of Vaugirard.
A Woman Sewing
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, with some
watercolour and heightened with touches of white,
on light brown paper
Signed and dated f. Bonvin 50 at the lower left
317 x 239 mm., 12 1/ 2 x 9 3/ 8 in.
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28
DANIEL GEVRIL
Carouge 1794–1875 Carouge
A gifted portrait painter and draughtsman. Daniel Gevril
received his artistic training at the Ecole de Dessin in
Geneva. His earliest exhibited works were portrait
drawings, shown in 1820 and 1826. From 1830 onwards,
however, he concentrated mainly on painted portraits,
which he exhibited regularly. Gevril was appointed a
professor of drawing at the Collège in his native Carouge in
1847. Writing shortly after the artist’s death, one critic noted
of him that ‘Ses portraits, peints finement et largement, sont
toujours d’une parfaite ressemblance, grâce à son habilité
comme dessinateur. Ils ont, en général, beaucoup de vie et de
relief; ils donnent à Gevril, dans l’école genevoise, une place
distinguée.’
A Young Girl Asleep
Pencil
Inscribed Souvenir from Mr. A to Mrs. A at the
bottom of the sheet
Further inscribed Gevril de Carouge and, in a
different hand, Gevril a Swiss Artist, on the verso
192 x 155 mm. (7 1/ 2 x 6 1/ 8 in.)
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34
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Facing page:
29
THOMAS RICHARD UNDERWOOD
1772–1836 Chamarande, near Paris
Above:
30
WILLIAM HENRY PYNE
London 1769–1843 London
A Group of views of Druids Lodge
Black Lion Lane, Canterbury
Three, one signed and inscribed verso: the ......
....../From the Book Room Window at/Druids Lodge/T R
Underwood
Watercolour over pencil on wove Whatman paper
Each approx 127 x 212 mm., 5 x 8 1/ 4 in.
Inscribed with title verso
Watercolour heightened with stopping out and
touches of bodycolour
124 x 173 mm., 4 3/ 4 x 6 3/ 4 in.
Provenance:
L.G. Duke (D4128)
With Spink & Sons, London
Private collection, London, until 2010
This may be a view of Druids Lodge, a house on the Plas
Newydd Estate, Anglesey. The house was recorded in the
1810s and 1820s as the house of John Sanderson, the agent
of the 1st Marquess Anglesey who owned Plas Newydd.
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31
ALFRED EDWARD CHALON, R.A.
Geneva 1780–1860 London
Lady Clementina Augusta Wellington Villiers (1824–1858)
was one of the seven children of the 5th Earl of Jersey and
the goddaughter of the Duke of Wellington. Her mother
Lady Jersey was one of the Grandes Dames of London
Society at the time and Clementina was a famous beauty.
Many men asked for her hand in marriage, the most
persistent being the Duke of Osasuna. She was taken ill with
a fever however while in Germany in 1858 and returned to
the family home at Middleton Park, Oxfordshire where she
died.
Portrait of Lady Clementina Villiers aged eight
Full-length in a garden, holding a hat
Signed in gold lower right: A.E. Chalon R.A. 1832.
Watercolour heightened with stopping out
404 x 267 mm., 15 3/ 4 x 10 1/ 2 in.
Engraved:
By H.T. Ryall for Heath’s Gallery, 1834
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32
MARY SMIRKE
London 1779–1853 Eton
The artist was the daughter of the painter Robert Smirke,
R.A. (1752–1845) and the brother of the architect of the
same name. Mary used to accompany her father and his
friend Joseph Farington (see no.17) on sketching tours. She
exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1809 until 1814 and
gave drawing lessons. These may originally have been part
of the group of twelve views in a leatherbound album which
were with the dealer Cyril Fry in the 1970s. Two views
from this group were also of The Grove and are now in
the British Museum (see Kim Sloan, ‘A Noble Art’ – Amateur
Artists and Drawing Masters c.1600–1800, 2000, p.204–5,
no.147, ill.).
The Grove at Stanmore, Middlesex
A pair, one signed with initials lower right and
inscribed on border: The Grove – St Albans in
distance
Watercolour over pencil
Each 140 x 228 mm., 5 1/ 2 x 9 in.
Provenance:
Bought by J.A. Dormer from Cork Street Gallery,
London, March 1972
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33
ROBERT HILLS
Islington 1769–1844 London
a. Deer in a Wooded Landscape
504 x 380 mm., 19 3/ 4 x 15 in.
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b. Deer and Horses in a Wooded Landscape
532 x 415 mm., 21 x 16 1/ 4 in.
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a.
34
JOHN CHESSELL BUCKLER
1793–1894
c. The High Street, Oxford
Signed on washline border lower right: Drawn by
J.C. Buckler 1812.
418 x 622 mm., 16 1/ 4 x 24 1/ 2 in.
a. The Interior of the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
Signed lower right: Drawn by J. Buckler. A.D. 1815,
with a dedication to Lord Grenville, Chancellor of
the University of Oxford underneath
Watercolour over pencil heightened with traces of
bodycolour
Image 435 x 613 mm., 17 x 24 in.
Provenance:
Private Collection, Suffolk
John Chessell Buckler was the eldest son of John Buckler
(1770–1851), the architect and architectural draughtsman
and, having worked with his father from 1810, took over his
architectural practice in 1826. He produced architectural
views of towns, villages and country houses and died aged
100.
b. Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford
Signed on washline border lower right: J. Buckler
1830..
354 x 267 mm., 13 3/ 4 x 10 1/ 2 in.
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b.
c.
41
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35
ANTHONY VANDYKE COPLEY FIELDING
Sowerby Bridge 1787–1855 Worthing
36
JOHN MARTIN
Hexham 1789–1854 Douglas, Isle of Man
View of Snowdon from the Head of the Valley, above
Capel Curig, Caernarvonshire
Figures by a Waterfall, a Town on a hill beyond
Watercolour heightened with scratching out and
gum arabic
212 x 160 mm., 8 1/ 2 x 6 1/ 4 in.
Signed lower left: Copley Fielding/1844
Watercolour over pencil heightened with
bodycolour, scratching out and stopping out
589 x 878 mm., 23 x 34 1/ 2 in.
Provenance:
Anonymous sale, Christie’s, 8th April 1997, lot 56
Private Collection
Provenance:
John Martin, 14 Berkeley Square, London, bought for 12
gns, 1845
With Frost and Reed, London
Anonymous sale, Christie’s 14th June 1983, lot 93
Allan Jacobs Gallery, London
Private Collection
John Martin was one of the best known and most original
artists of the first half of the nineteenth century, often
depicting cataclysmic events on a large scale. The depiction
of humanity dwarved by nature as seen in the present work
is typical. He is currently the subject of an exhibition at Tate
Britain.
Exhibited:
London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, 1845, no.157
Michael Campbell dates this drawing to circa 1811–12
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which would make it an early work. At the time Martin was
training as a glass and china painter at William Collins’s
workshop on the Strand and in the evenings he studied as
a painter. In 1811, he exhibited his first picture at the Royal
Academy, ‘Landscape Composition’ and left Collins’s
workshop the following year. In 1812, he painted one of
his first major paintings, ‘Sadak in search of the Waters of
Oblivion’ which was accepted by the Royal Academy and
he was beginning to establish himself as a drawing master.
In the present work, although Martin has clearly drawn on
the many eighteenth century views of the town and
waterfall at Tivoli near Rome which he would have known,
the topographical details are incorrect for Tivoli.
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37
GIACINTO GIGANTE
Naples 1806–1876 Naples
Watercolour, heightened with touches of gouache,
on buff paper
Signed and dated Gia Gigante 1850 at the lower left
276 x 379 mm., 10 7/ 8 x 14 7/ 8 in.
region, where fertility and wildness meet, . . . where at every
turn some feature, soft or savage, forms a seductive or striking
frame to the distant landscape, Sig. Gigante finds the subjects
of those studies, which, for freedom of handling, fidelity of
colour, transparency, perspective, and effect, have no parallel
on his own more ambitious canvass, or on the canvass of any
living painter of his country.’ Significant groups of drawings
and watercolours by Gigante are today in the Museo
Nazionale di Capodimonte and the Museo Nazionale di
San Martino, both in Naples.
Giacinto Gigante was trained in the Neapolitan studio of the
Dutch artist Antoon Sminck Pitloo, who encouraged his
students to paint all’aperto, or out of doors. He was soon
established as a successful landscape painter and
draughtsman, with a particular penchant for views of Naples
and the surrounding region, and became the acknowledged
leader of a group of Neapolitan landscape artists later
known as the Scuola di Posillipo. Writing in 1853, one
contemporary English critic noted of Gigante that, ‘There is
no portion of the Neapolitan scenery, to which he has not been
a frequent, patient, enthusiastic visitant . . . In this tempered
This watercolour depicts a view near the forested mountain
village of Casarlano, above the town of Sorrento,
overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Gigante spent much of
1848 and 1849 living and working in Sorrento, and the view
from Casarlano and the woods surrounding it appears in a
number of drawings and watercolours of this period. A
larger variant of this composition, also dated 1850 but with
different staffage, is in a private Neapolitan collection.
Another, smaller gouache of the same view by Gigante,
again dated 1850, was in the Statella collection in Naples in
1930.
Casarlano, near Sorrento
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38
WILLIAM WYLD
London 1806–1889 Paris
A diplomat and later wine-merchant who spent most of his
life in France, Wyld began his career in 1826 as Secretary to
the British Consul in Calais, where he was a pupil of Francia.
Strongly influenced by Bonington whose work he knew,
Wyld visited Algeria in 1833 in the company of the French
artist Horace Vernet. He travelled extensively in Europe and
this may be a view on the Rhine.
A Bridge over a Continental River
Signed lower right
bodycolour
104 x 156 mm., 4 x 6 in.
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39
WILLIAM WYLD
London 1806–1889 Paris
40
JAMES HOLLAND, O.W.S.
Burslem 1799-1870 London
Venice
a. View of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
Signed lower left
57 x 180 mm., 2 1/ 4 x 7 in.
Pencil on paper; a page from a sketchbook
Signed with initials, inscribed and dated JH Venice 57
at the lower right
131 x 197 mm., 5 1/ 8 x 7 3/ 4 in.
See no.38 for a note on the artist.
b. A Sheet of Studies of Gondolas and Figures
Pencil and watercolour on paper; a page from a
sketchbook
Signed with initials, inscribed and dated JH Melons
.26.Sept.57 at the lower right
131 x 198 mm., 5 1/ 8 x 7 3/ 4 in.
Provenance:
Probably the Holland studio sale, London, Christie’s, 26
May 1870
John Appleby, Jersey
James Holland made his first visit to Venice in 1835, and
displayed a lifelong fascination with the architecture of the
city. He first exhibited a watercolour view of Venice at the
Old Water-Colour Society in 1836, and continued to show
Venetian subjects throughout his later career. A photograph
of another page from the same 1857 Venice sketchbook,
depicting fishing boats moored on a quayside and dated
October 3rd, 1857, is in the Witt Library, London.
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a.
b.
47
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41
EDUARD BENDEMANN
Berlin 1811–1889 Düsseldorf
Provenance:
Possibly Richard Schöne, Berlin
Friedrich Schöne, Essen and Berlin (Lugt 3622), his stamp
on the verso
In 1834 he received a commission from the Prussian crown
prince for a painting of Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem,
and three years later painted an allegorical fresco for the
house of the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow in Berlin.
In 1838 Bendemann was appointed a professor at the
Dresden Akademie, and soon afterwards received a
commission for the fresco decoration of three large rooms
in the royal palace in Dresden, a project that was to occupy
the artist for the better part of fifteen years. In 1859 he was
appointed Director of the Akademie in Düsseldorf, and was
established as a leading figure among the cultured elite of
the city. The year after Bendemann’s death in 1889, a large
retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the
Nationalgalerie in Berlin. A sizeable group of drawings by
the artist is today in the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett
in Berlin.
Eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann received his training in
the studio of Wilhelm Schadow. Between 1830 and 1831
he visited Italy, and on his return to Düsseldorf painted his
first major work, a canvas of Captive Jews in Babylon, which
was exhibited with considerable success in Berlin in 1832.
This charming, informal drawing bears the collector’s mark
of the lawyer Friedrich Schöne (1882-1963), part of whose
collection of 19th century German drawings may have been
inherited from his father, the archaeologist and museum
director Richard Schöne (1840–1922).
A Young Boy Reading at a Table
Pencil on paper
A sketch of the head of the same boy in pencil on
the verso
Inscribed and dated Df. July 68 at the lower left
191 x 227 mm., 7 1/ 2 x 8 7/ 8 in.
48
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42
JAMES THOMAS LINNELL
Hampstead 1823–1905
The second son of the landscape painter John Linnell, James
Thomas Linnell studied at the Royal Academy Schools
alongside his two brothers John and William. He exhibited
almost annually at the Royal Academy between 1850 and
1888, showing at first religious subjects in which the
landscape predominated. By the middle of the decade,
however, he was exhibiting mainly landscapes with peasants
and farm labourers and it is for these pastoral landscapes
that he is best known today. Writing in 1872, one critic
noted that ‘James Thomas Linnell . . . is entitled to share with
his brother William the estimation in which their pictures are
held by the amateur and collector, sometimes rivalling even
those of his father.’
A Log Stack
Black chalk, with touches of white chalk on blue
paper; a page from a large sketchbook
Signed and dated J. Linnell 1865 at the lower right
430 x 289 mm., 16 7/ 8 x 11 3/ 8 in. [sheet]
Provenance:
By descent in the family of the artist
Stephen Somerville, London, in 1980
Charles Ryskamp, New York
49
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43
HENRY EDRIDGE, A.R.A.
Paddington 1769–1821 London
portraitist in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries – his portraits are executed in pencil with subtle
tints of colour. These are examples of his landscapes drawn
in a similar style to Hearne and Girtin, his friends and fellow
artists.
a. The Inauguration of the Equestrian Statue of Henry
IV on the Pont Neuf, Paris
The statue of Henry IV which stands on the Pont Neuf
where it crosses the Ile de la Cité was originally
commissioned from Giambologna by the King’s widow,
Marie de Medici in 1614. However Giambologna died and
it was completed by his assistant Pietro Tacca and erected
in 1618. It was destroyed in 1792, during the French
Revolution, but was rebuilt on the restoration of the
Bourbon monarchy in 1818. This shows its inauguration on
25th August 1818 which Edridge witnessed.
Inscribed with title lower left and dated 25th August
1818
Pencil
285 x 492 mm., 111/ 4 x 19 1/ 4 in.
Edridge was born in Paddington, London, and studied at the
Royal Academy where he began to exhibit portrait
miniatures from 1786 (he exhibited 260 pictures there
during his lifetime). He achieved considerable success as a
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b. Notre Dame from the Quai de la Tournelle, Paris
These drawings date from the first of Edridge’s three trips
to Paris and Northern France in the summers of 1818,
1819 and 1820. He exhibited nine French views at the
Royal Academy in 1820 and 1821, the year of his death. A
sketchbook of his French tour of 1819 is in the British
Museum and other French views by him are in the Royal
Collection, Courtauld Institute, the Yale Center for British
Art and Birmingham City Art Gallery.
Inscribed lower left: Pont au Double Notre Dame/&
the Pont de la Cite, from the/Quai de la Tournelle,
Aug.t/11.th 1818.
Pen and brown ink over pencil on buff paper
285 x 489 mm., 111/ 4 x 19 1/ 4 in.
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44
HENRY EDRIDGE, A.R.A.
Paddington 1769–1821 London
a. The Cathedral at Evreux from the Rue de L’Eveche
Inscribed with title lower left
Pen and grey and brown ink over pencil
425 x 344 mm., 16 3/ 4 x 13 1/ 2 in.
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b. The Entrance to the Palais de Justice from the Rue
aux Juifs, Rouen
Inscribed with title lower left and dated July 16.th
1819
Pencil
466 x 326 mm., 18 1/ 4 x 12 3/ 4 in.
For more information on these drawings, see no.43.
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a.
b.
45
JOHN VARLEY
Hackney 1778–1842 London
b. A Boat on a River
a. A Castle by a Lake in a Mountainous Landscape
bodycolour and gum arabic
95 x 135 mm., 3 3/ 4 x 5 1/ 4 in.
Signed lower right
126 x 193 mm., 5 x 7 1/ 2 in.
Provenance:
With Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd (no.28531)
Dr W. Gordon, Birmingham
54
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46
LAZARE MEYER
Fegersheim 1847–1896 Paris
Very little is known of the artist Lazare Meyer. Born in
Germany, he settled in France, studying in Paris with the
painters Alexandre Cabanel, Emile Lévy and Alexandre
Laemlein. He exhibited genre paintings and portraits at the
Salons between 1870 and 1882. He also contributed to the
decoration of the Maison Pichenot ceramic factory, built
between 1880 and 1884 on the rue de la Pierre Levée in
Paris. For the facade of the building, Meyer painted a series
of large ceramic panels depicting various arts and crafts,
based on designs by his teacher Emile Lévy, which are still
in situ today.
Head of a Man
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated LAZAR-MEYER / 1868 at the
lower left
203 x 186 mm., 8 x 7 3/ 8 in.
Provenance:
W. M. Brady & Co., New York, in 1994
This small oil sketch may be a self-portrait, depicting the
young artist in his student days.
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47
PAUL JACOB NAFTEL, R.W.S.
St. Peter Port 1817–1891 Twickenham
In 1870 Naftel decided to leave Guernsey and settle in
London, where he lived and worked for the remainder of
his career. He traveled extensively around Scotland, North
Wales and Ireland, and also made several visits to Italy. In
1889 a one-man exhibition of his work, comprising sixty-six
watercolours, was held at the Fine Art Society in London,
marking the high point of the artist’s career. One review of
the exhibition noted that ‘There is a delicious quality about
Mr. Paul Naftel’s best work, which it would be hard to convey
in words. Something in the delicacy and skill of his handling
and something in his choice of projects and accentuation of
parts produces an aerial quality quite delightful to behold.’
Naftel died two years later, at the age of seventy-five. The
remaining contents of his studio, amounting to some four
hundred works, were dispersed at auction at Christie’s in
London in April 1892.
A Moorland Scene, possibly near Killin, Perthshire
Watercolour, heightened with gouache, on paper
laid down on board
Signed and dated Paul Naftel 1873 at the lower left
Inscribed (by Cochrane) J.P.C. No 179.B. / PAUL
NAFTEL on the verso
227 x 458 mm., 8 7/ 8 x 18 in.
Provenance:
J. P. W. Cochrane, London
Thence by descent until 2010
During the early and mid-1870s Naftel made several visits
to Scotland, and the present sheet may depict a Scottish
view. Indeed, it may tentatively be identified as one of
several views of the moor near Killin in Perthshire, sent by
Naftel to the 1873 and 1874 exhibitions of the Old
Watercolour Society.
Born on the island of Guernsey, Paul Naftel was from an
early age devoted to painting and drawing, in which he was
self-taught. His earliest works are views of Guernsey, which
were reproduced as lithographs and sold to tourists visiting
the island. In 1850 he exhibited for the first time at the Old
Watercolour Society in London, showing five views of
Guernsey and one of North Wales. Naftel continued to
send finished watercolours to the annual exhibitions of the
O.W.S., often previewing the works in his studio in St. Peter
Port before they were dispatched to London.
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48
WILLIAM HAMILTON YATMAN
London 1819–1913 Bournemouth
A barrister by profession, William Hamilton Yatman was also
an amateur artist. He was educated at Winchester College
and at Caius College, Cambridge, for whom he rowed in
the Boat Race in 1839. Yatman was admitted to the Inner
Temple in 1840 and called to the bar four years later. He
served as a Justice of the Peace in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire
and Warwickshire, and in 1864 acquired Highgrove House,
near Tetbury, today the country home of the Prince of
Wales. An amateur draughtsman, Yatman had a preference
for natural history subjects, and drawings such as the present
sheet, executed with a refined and delicate watercolour
technique, reflect his interest in the world around him.
Two Star Corals
Watercolour, over a pencil underdrawing, within a
drawn border in black ink
220 x 318 mm. (8 5/ 8 x 12 1/ 2 in.)
Provenance:
Albany Gallery, London, in 1983
Exhibited:
London, Albany Gallery, An Exhibition of 19th Century
Watercolour Drawings of Sea Shells from the Indian, Pacific
and Mediterranean Oceans, December 1983, no.2
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49
ALEXANDRE THOMAS FRANCIA
Calais 1815–1884 Brussels
Exhibited:
London, Anthony Reed Gallery, Louis Francia and his son
Alexandre, 1985, p.87, no.56, illustrated p.32.
A Still Life of Letters, Cards, an Envelope, a Pencil, a
Match and a Cigar Stub
The son and pupil of the emigré French watercolourist
François Louis Francia, Alexandre Francia travelled
extensively throughout Europe, particularly in Scotland and
the Low Countries, and eventually settled in Brussels. He
specialized in marine subjects, notably views of ports, fishing
scenes and storms. Francia made his Salon debut in Paris in
1835, and exhibited in Paris, London, Antwerp and Brussels
throughout his career, receiving numerous honours and
prizes.
Watercolour
Signed with a depiction of the artist’s visiting card,
inscribed Mr A. FRANCIA. / 6 rue de Berceau and
P.P.C.
Dated 1880 twice, on a letter and a banknote
171 x 214 mm., 6 3/ 4 x 8 3/ 8 in.
This charming still life watercolour is unusual in Alexandre
Francia’s oeuvre, which is dominated by landscapes and
seascapes. When the present sheet was exhibited in
London in 1985, it was noted that ‘Painted not long before
the artist died, it carries, with its cigar stub and the blackedged visiting card ironically marked P.P.C. (parti pour congé),
a suitably valedictory message.’
Provenance:
Nicholas Meinertzhagen, London
King Street Galleries, London, in 1987
Mr. and Mrs. Jerrold Ziff, Urbana, Illinois
58
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50
EMILE DE SPECHT
Born Saint-Denis 1843
Wilhelm Émile Charles Adolphe de Specht was a pupil of
Léon Cogniet and Félix-Joseph Barrias at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in Paris, which he entered in 1861. He exhibited
at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1865 to 1897,
showing mainly views of Paris, genre scenes and portraits.
He also exhibited one work at the Salon des Refusés in
1873 and at the Salon des Indépendants in 1888.
A Presumed Portrait of Edgar Degas
Black chalk, with stumping
Signed and dated Le 22 Novembre 1878 / Émile de
Specht / Paris at the lower right
305 x 232 mm., 12 x 9 1/ 8 in.
The present sheet would appear to be a casual portrait of
the artist Edgar Degas (1834–1917) at the age of forty-four.
A similar portrait drawing in black chalk by Émile de Specht,
depicting Dr. Paul Gachet and dated the 19th of December
1895, is now lost, but is known from an engraving by
Gachet himself, under the name Paul van Ryssel.
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51
SAMUEL PROUT
Diss 1783–1852 London
This is a fine example of Prout’s early style before he visited
the Continent in 1819. It is likely to be the picture of this title
exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in
1815, no. 349 which was bought by Lord Buckinghamshire
for 4 guineas.
Near Plymouth
Signed on prow of boat lower centre and inscribed
verso: near Plymouth
Watercolour over traces of pencil heightened with
touches of bodycolour
247 x 227 mm., 9 3/ 4 x 9 in.
Provenance:
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52
SAMUEL JACKSON
Bristol 1794–1869 Clifton
the left of Mont Blanc. Jackson visited Switzerland twice, in
1854 and 1858, when Chamonix was still a small village.
Although the first luxury hotel was built in 1816, it only
gained proper road access in 1866 under the reign of
Napoleon III, when the first horse-drawn coaches alighted
in the village square.
Mont Blanc and the Valley of Chamonix
Signed lower right: S Jackson and inscribed in an old
hand verso: Mont Blanc and Valley of Chamounix/by
Sam.l Jackson
Watercolour heightened with bodycolour
338 x 518 mm., 13 1/ 4 x 20 1/ 4 in.
Jackson was one of the best known artists of the Bristol
School. He was born in Bristol, the son of a merchant and
worked for his father until 1820 when he became a
professional artist. He became a well known drawing
teacher in Bristol and travelled extensively in Britain.
Mallalieu described him as ‘the father figure and mainstay of
the Bristol school’ (Huon Mallalieu, Dictionary of British
Watercolour Artists, 2002, p.330).
Jackson painted this view of Mont Blanc from the top of the
Chamonix valley above Argentière. The Aiguilles de
Chamonix, or Needles of Chamonix can be clearly seen to
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EDWIN DALTON SMITH
1800–1883
Provenance:
Lord Courthope, Whiligh, Wadhurst, East Sussex;
By descent until 2011
a. Portrait of Anna Deacon
Anna Deacon married George Courthope Esq. Of Whiligh
in January 1841. She was the eldest daughter of John
Deacon of Mabledon, Tonbridge. Deacon made his fortune
in Deacon’s Bank and bought Mabledon from the Burton
family in 1828.
Full-length in a doorway
Signed lower right: Edwin D. Smith pin.t 1839
Watercolour heightened with bodycolour, with
corners cut
301 x 243 mm., 113/ 4 x 9 1/ 2 in.
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b. Portrait of Frances Deacon
Three-quarter length seated at a table holding a
guitar
Signed lower right: Edwin D. Smith pin.t 1839
corners cut
330 x 246 mm., 13 x 9 1/ 2 in.
Frances Deacon later married Col. Arthur Ramsden of
Steneness, Ashurst.
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54
EDWIN DALTON SMITH
1800–1883
Provenance:
Lord Courthope, Whiligh, Wadhurst, East Sussex;
By descent until 2011
a. Portrait of Lady Sophia Deacon aged seven
Lady Sophia Deacon died, aged twenty-one, in 1852.
Full-length in a garden carrying a basket
Signed lower left: Edwin D. Smith pin.t 1838
corners cut
335 x 257 mm., 13 x 10 in.
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b. Portrait of William Samuel Deacon
Three-quarter length, holding a fishing rod
Signed lower left: Edwin D. Smith pin.t 1838
corners cut
335 x 257 mm., 13 x 10 in.
William Deacon married Miss Mary Sophia Currie.
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a.
55
HENRI ZUBER
Rixheim 1844–1909 Paris
Provenance:
Pierre Miquel, Paris
Private collection, Paris
a. Landscape with a Stormy Sky
Born in Alsace, Jean Henri Zuber spent most of the 1860s
serving in the French navy, and it was during this time that
he began producing watercolour sketches. When he left
the navy in 1868, he decided to embark on a career as an
artist, and entered the atelier of the painter Charles Gleyre.
In 1869 he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français for
the first time and, apart from 1871 and 1872, showed there
every year thereafter until his death in 1909. Working from
a studio on the rue de Vaugirard in Paris, Zuber came to
specialize in views of the city – in both oil and watercolour
– as well as scenes elsewhere in France. He exhibited at the
Salons from 1869 onwards, and from 1884 also showed
with the Société des Aquarellistes Français. He would
sometimes go on sketching tours in the company of his
fellow painter Paul Lecomte, and would spend each
summer in the town of Ferrette in Alsace. In 1910, the year
after his death, a large retrospective exhibition of Zuber’s
Watercolour, over a pencil underdrawing
Stamped with the Zuber atelier stamp (not in Lugt)
on the verso
122 x 190 mm., 4 3/ 4 x 7 1/ 2 in.
b. Study of Sky and Clouds
Watercolour, over a pencil underdrawing
Signed with initials H.Z. at the lower right
Inscribed Claude and Marc on the verso
Stamped with the Oeuvre Henri Zuber / catalogue
général stamp (not in Lugt) on the verso, as Serie f,
No.123 and entitled prairie
91 x 150 mm., 3 5/ 8 x 5 7/ 8 in.
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b.
As one contemporary critic wrote, shortly after Henri
Zuber’s death, ‘For twenty years he contributed largely to the
success of the Société des Aquerellistes Français. He
understood thoroughly the fundamental principles of aquarelle,
and his trained vision enabled him to endow each of his
drawings with the atmosphere and character peculiar to the
subject. He was equally successful with diverse subjects,
whether it was Venice, the shores of the Lake of Como, Antibes,
Versailles, among the Jura Mountains, or simply an evening
effect in the Luxembourg Gardens, at the Pont Royal, or the
Place de la Concorde . . . Henri Zuber’s art, at once so
delicate, so subtle, and so personal, places this painter among
the masters, such as Corot, Daubigny, and Cazin, who infused
into their art something of their own very soul, that indefinable
quality, call it genius or what you will, that makes of a simple
picture a masterpiece.’
work was held at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Works
by the artist are today in the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay,
as well as in many provincial museums in France.
Zuber is noted to have often said that, “The language of the
sky, the earth, and the sea is eternal!”, and this is particularly
evident in many of his watercolours. As a watercolourist,
Zuber’s work at times comes close to that of his older
contemporary, Henri-Joseph Harpignies, and like him was
greatly admired by English collectors. (In a review of an
exhibition of Zuber’s watercolours held at the Goupil
galleries in London in 1883, a critic in the Pall Mall Gazette
noted of the artist that ‘His treatment of water-colour is much
more English than French . . . It is evident that his sympathies
are with the younger English school, to whom, however, the
purity and freshness of his tones might often be objects of
envy.’)
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56
FRANÇOIS CLÉMENT SOMMIER, called
HENRY SOMM
Rouen 1844–1907 Paris
group of artists associated with the cabaret Le Chat Noir, for
whose eponymous journal he published reviews and
articles. In the latter part of his career, Somm’s draughtsmanship became both more economical in line and more
self-assured.
Study of a Young Woman
The subject matter of Henry Somm’s watercolours tend
towards elegant, often wistful young women, depicted with
a particular delicacy of touch. The critic Louis Morin, writing
in 1893, noted of the artist that ‘His pastels and water colors
are much sought after; he has the painter’s eye to the highest
degree imaginable...More than any other artist Somm is the
painter of the Parisienne; not the society woman, but the
prettily dressed girl who runs about the streets, her nose in the
air, laughing unceremoniously at the compliments of the
passers-by, and who sometimes enters the Moulin Rouge or
the Elysée-Montmarte. It is by Somm’s works that she will live,
this masterpiece of roguish grace, the grisette of Paris.’
Watercolour, with pen and black ink
106 x 163 mm., 4 1/ 4 x 6 3/ 8 in.
Henry Somm settled in Paris in the late 1860s, and enjoyed
a successful career as an illustrator and draughtsman,
contributing to such popular journals as Le Monde Parisien
and L’Illustration Nouvelle. He was also active as a graphic
designer, providing designs for menus, theatre programs,
invitations and announcements for the many fashionable
events of Belle Epoque Paris. At the invitation of Edgar
Degas, Somm took part in the fourth Impressionist
exhibition of 1879. The 1880s found him linked with a
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57
PAUL-ALBERT BESNARD
Paris 1849–1936 Paris
important portrait commissions. By the 1880s Besnard was
one of the most highly regarded and fashionable society
portrait painters in Paris. He developed a particularly
evocative manner of depicting his sitters that relied on
luminous, vibrant colours, dramatic (and at times artificial)
lighting and bold brushwork. These elements also found
their way into the artist’s other main activity; his work as a
decorative mural painter. Besnard painted large decorative
schemes for several public buildings, including the Sorbonne
and the Pavillion des Arts Décoratifs at the Exposition
Universelle of 1900, as well as ceiling decorations for the
Hôtel de Ville, the Comédie Francaise and the Petit Palais.
Besnard exhibited regularly at the Salons, and at the Societé
Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1890 onwards.
Portrait of a Young Man in Profile
Oil on board
Signed with the artist’s monogram and dated AB 77
at the lower left.
113 x 101 mm., 4 1/ 2 x 4 in.
Provenance:
David and Constance Yates, New York, in 1992
Painted in 1877 during Besnard’s stay at the French
Academy in Rome, this small portrait may depict a fellow
pensionnaire at the Villa Medici.
Albert Besnard entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1866
and two years later made his debut at the Salon. In 1874 he
won the Prix de Rome. His five years at the Villa Medici in
Rome were followed by three years in London, between
1879 and 1881, during which he obtained several
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58
EDWARD LEAR
Highgate 1812–1888 San Remo
These drawings date from Lear’s first tour of Europe in the
summer of 1837. Having spent the early summer of 1837
in Devon, Lear returned to London in early July. From there
he set off for the Continent on the Antwerp packet boat on
10th July in the company of his sister Ann, with whom he
travelled as far as Brussels. He then passed through
Luxembourg, Germany and Switzerland before spending
September and October in the Italian Lakes, reaching
Florence in November and Rome in early December. For
most of the next ten years, Lear spent the winter in Rome
and visited the rest of Italy in the summer.
a. A market, Koblenz
Inscribed upper left: ..blenz. 1837./August 12.
Pencil heightened with white on grey paper, with
corners cut
169 x 258 mm., 6 1/ 2 x 10 in.
Koblenz is a large town sitting at the confluence of the Mosel
and the Rhine. Lear travelled north-east up the Mosel from
Luxembourg to Koblenz then south down the Rhine. He
was at Schloss Eltz on the 7th and 8th August, then Koblenz
on the 12th and Kaub on the 22nd.
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b. View of Sion, Switzerland
The town of Sion is the capital of the Swiss canton of Valais
and is approximately fifty miles east of Geneva. Above the
sixteenth century buildings of the town stands the Basilique
de Valère, a fortified church dating from the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries and on the hill beyond is the ruined
Château de Tourbillon. In the foreground the church with
the spire is the Cathedral Nôtre-Dame du Glarier with, to
its right the small church of St Théodule. Lear was in
Geneva on 8th September, reached Sion by the 17th and
Lake Maggiore in the Italian Lakes by the 28th.
Inscribed lower right: Sion. 17. Sept. 1837
Pencil heightened with touches of white on grey
paper, with cut corners
250 x 346 mm., 9 3/ 4 x 13 1/ 2 in.
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Above:
59
WILLIAM ROXBY BEVERLY
Richmond, Yorkshire 1811-1889 Hampstead
Provenance:
Appleby Bros., London
Beverly was a son of a family of northern actors and began
his career as a scene painter and actor for his father. Typically
he produced beach scenes with beached boats and sunsets
with strong colours often depicting the north-east coast of
England.
Fishermen on the Beach, Hastings
Watercolour heightened with bodycolour, stopping
out and scratching out
657 x 927 mm., 25 3/ 4 x 36 1/ 2 in.
b. Moonrise over Moorland
Facing page:
60
WILLIAM ROXBY BEVERLY
Richmond, Yorkshire 1811–1889 Hampstead
Inscribed verso: Moonrise and in another hand: by
W Beverly
Watercolour heightened with stopping out
146 x 255 mm., 5 3/ 4 x 10 in.
a. Study of a Sky
162 x 257 mm., 6 1/ 4 x 10 in.
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a.
b.
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61
JAMES BAKER PYNE
Bristol 1800–1870 London
The size of the river depicted suggests this is likely to be a
view on the Thames. The church tower looks like the
church of St. Nicholas, Chiswick but there was no bridge
over the Thames at Chiswick until 1933.
a. A View on the Thames
Signed lower left: JBPyne/1833
Watercolour over pencil heightened with scratching
out and gum arabic
210 x 284 mm., 8 1/ 4 x 11 in.
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b. A View in the Lake District, possibly the Banks of
the Derwent, Borrowdale
Signed lower left: PYNE/1833
bodycolour
180 x 255 mm., 7 x 10 in.
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62
GEORGES ANTOINE ROCHEGROSSE
Versailles 1859–1938 El-Biar, Algiers
This radiant watercolour is a preparatory study for the
nymph at the lower left of Rochegrosse’s monumental
canvas Le Chevalier aux Fleurs (The Knight of the Flowers),
painted in 1892. The painting was first exhibited in Munich
in 1892 and, two years later, in Paris, where it was acquired
by the State; it is today in the Musée d’Orsay. The subject
of the painting is taken from Wagner’s opera Parsifal, and
depicts the chaste hero Parsifal who walks through the
enchanted garden of the castle of the magician Klingsor, deaf
to the entreaties of the beautiful and seductive flower
maidens, bodies barely covered with flowers, who call to
him (‘Komm, komm, holder Knabe!’). Rochegrosse’s large
painting was much praised by critics, one of whom
described it as a ‘bouquet of fireworks.’
A Woman Reclining in a Field of Flowers: Study for Le
Chevalier aux Fleurs
Watercolour
Signed G Rochegrosse at the lower right
237 x 241 mm., 9 3/ 8 x 9 1/ 2 in. [sheet]
One of leading exponents of Orientalism in France, Georges
Rochegrosse made his debut at the Salon de la Société des
Artistes Français in 1882. His earliest exhibited works
tended towards scenes from literature, legend and history,
often tinged with violence, but the 1890s found the artist
working in a more Symbolist vein, exemplified by his large
painting The Knight of the Flowers of 1892. He also received
several commissions for public decorations. By the turn of
the century, however, Rochegrosse had come to be best
known as a fashionable painter of Orientalist and exotic
subjects.
Many of Rochegrosse’s paintings of the period between
1890 and 1920 feature his favourite model; his wife Marie
Leblond, who is likely to have posed for the present sheet.
Another watercolour study of the same figure is illustrated
in a deluxe edition of Octave Charpentier’s poem Le
chevalier aux fleurs, inspired by Rochegrosse’s painting,
published in 1941.
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63
PAUL LECOMTE
A landscape painter and watercolourist, Paul Lecomte made
his debut at the Salon in 1868, gaining an honourable
mention two years later and thereafter exhibiting yearly until
1912. Lecomte worked mainly in Paris, where he produced
numerous urban views of the city, and in Normandy and
Brittany, as well as the South of France, the Basque region
and England.
The Beach at Brighton
Watercolour
Signed and inscribed Paul Lecomte / (Brighton) at the
lower left
237 x 233 mm., 9 3/ 8 x 9 1/ 8 in.
This view of Brighton beach may be dated to 1887, the date
of two other views of the town by the artist. Another
watercolour of the beach at Brighton by Lecomte appeared
at auction in England in 1992, while a watercolour titled
‘Souvenir de Brighton’ and dated ‘30 Mai 1887’ was sold in
New York in 1984.
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Facing page:
64
HENRY JUTSUM
Above:
65
WILLIAM LEIGHTON LEITCH
Glasgow 1804–1883 London
Trees by a River
A Windmill by a Country Road
Signed lower right: Henry Jutsum
Watercolour heightened with touches of
bodycolour
375 x 282 mm., 14 3/ 4 x 11 in.
Signed and dated 1856 lower left
bodycolour
225 x 356 mm., 8 3/ 4 x 14 in.
Jutsum was born in London and having gone to school in
Devon, he returned to London where he began to sketch
in Kensington Gardens. In 1839, he took lessons from the
Norwich School artist James Stark. Through Stark, Jutsum
absorbed the influence of Norwich School artists such as
his friend Henry Bright and John Middleton.
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66
EDWARD DUNCAN, R.W.S.
Duncan trained as an aquatint engraver under the Havells
and was introduced to marine painting, which became his
speciality, by William Huggins whose pictures he engraved
and whose daughter he married. His marine scenes usually
depict south coast views often in rough seas. He exhibited
at the Royal Academy and prinicipally the Old and New
Watercolour Societies from 1830 until 1882.
A Wreck off the Gower Coast
Signed lower left and dated 1869
out
213 x 517 mm., 8 1/ 4 x 20 1/ 4 in.
Provenance:
Anonymous sale, Christie’s, 25th November 1969, lot 139
Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, 28th April 1983, lot 130
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67
HENRY BARLOW CARTER
Scarborough 1804–1868 Torquay
The Dovecote Rock, Flamborough, Yorkshire
Signed lower right: H.B. CARTER
out and gum arabic
312 x 468 mm., 12 1/ 4 x 18 1/ 4 in.
Provenance:
Private collection since the 1970s
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68
WILLIAM LIONEL WYLLIE, R.A.
Wyllie is known for his elaborate shipping scenes in
watercolour and oil, often of Thames views. This on-thespot sketch shows his more spontaneous side.
A Three-Masted Ship moored off the Coast
Watercolour
144 x 238 mm., 5 1/ 2 x 9 1/ 4 in.
Provenance:
Given by the artist to his daughter
By family descent
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69
ALFRED WILLIAM HUNT
Liverpool 1830–1896 London
This is a view taken from the north-west across the mouth
of the River Esk towards Whitby Abbey and it is a subject
which Hunt drew on a number of occasions. Hunt first
visited Whitby in about 1874 and returned repeatedly. A
finished view taken from the same point dates from 1881
and is entitled ‘A Fine Evening at Whitby’ (see Christopher
Newall, The Poetry of Truth – Alfred William Hunt and the
Art of Landscape, 2004, no.55, ill.). A similarly sketchy
version of this view, signed and dated 1874, was sold at
Christie’s in the Dawson sale, 3rd June 2004, lot 6. This
on-the-spot sketch shows the influence of J.M.W. Turner.
View of the Town and Abbey of Whitby, Yorkshire
Watercolour heightened with bodycolour
Sheet 246 x 310 mm., 9 1/ 2 x 12 in.
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70
WILLIAM FRASER GARDEN
Gillingham 1856–1921 Huntingdon
Provenance:
The Broderick family, Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire
Born into a family of landscape artists, William Fraser Garden
painted watercolour views of his native Huntingdonshire
and the fen villages along the Great Ouse river in
Bedfordshire which are masterpieces of clarity and detail.
The manor house at Hemingford Grey, situated close to
the 12th century church of Saint James, is noted by Pevsner
as being ‘of very special interest’ for its central hall, which also
dates from the 12th century. The gardens of the house
extend down to the Ouse, with a moat enclosing the
grounds on the other three sides.
The Manor House by the River Ouse at Hemingford
Grey, Huntingdonshire
Watercolour
Signed and dated W. F. GARDEN: ‘95. at the lower
left
Inscribed Manor-house, Hemingford Grey. on the
verso
229 x 181 mm., 9 x 7 1/ 8 in.
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71
SIR WILLIAM ORPEN, R.H.A., R.A.
Stillorgan, Co. Dublin 1878–1931 London
Another critic, writing at the same time in The Ladies’ Field,
noted that ‘Mr. Orpen may be described as a tender
draughtsman, tender in his care of and love for his materials.
His hand is so marvellously delicate. His pencil hovers over the
paper with the grace of a butterfly…He does not strive for the
beauty of feature, as the French draughtsmen of the
eighteenth century tried to capture those qualities. At times he
is almost ugly and brutal; but he never loses the beauty of
form.’
Study of a Sleeping Baby Girl
Pencil
Signed and dated William Orpen ‘03 at the lower left
205 x 318 mm., 8 x 12 1/ 2 in.
Throughout his career, William Orpen was admired as one
of the finest draughtsmen of his day. He drew for long hours
every day, and left behind a large corpus of drawings and
sketches. As the critic of The Art News commented of a
publication of a portfolio of ten photogravure reproductions
of his drawings in 1915, ‘These drawings are remarkable not
only for their delicacy of handling, but for the loving care with
which the pencil has revelled in beauty of form. Mr. William
Orpen is thoroughly modern, yet he continues a tradition which
has been handed down from the great draughtsmen of the
past. His work does not suffer when placed by the side of the
work of the Old Masters, a supreme but dangerous test.’
The present sheet is likely to depict the artist’s eldest
daughter Mary, born in September 1902 and known in the
family as ‘Bunnie’. Between 1902 and 1904 Orpen
produced a series of drawings of his wife Grace and Mary,
based around the baby in her crib or at bath time. These
studies culminated in the painting Bath Hour, exhibited at
the New English Art Club in 1904 and today in the William
Humphries Art Gallery in Kimberley, South Africa.
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a.
72
ALCESTE CAMPRIANI
Terni 1848–1933 Lucca
b. A Fisherman in his Boat
Oil on panel
Inscribed Dipinto autentico di Alceste / Campriani Gli
eredi / Marzia Mattioli Borckeky(?) and numbered (2)
on the reverse
Stamped with the panel-maker’s stamp Giosi Napoli
on the reverse.
131 x 222 mm., 5 1/ 8 x 8 3/ 4 in.
a. A Fishing Boat
Oil on panel
Inscribed Dipinto autentico di Alceste / Campriani Gli
eredi / Marzia Mattioli / Borckeky(?) / (2) velluto rosso
mattone / scodellina a lato on the reverse
Stamped with the panel-maker’s stamp Giosi Napoli
on the reverse.
101 x 227 mm., 4 x 8 7/ 8 in.
Provenance:
The artist’s studio, Naples
Thence by descent in the family of the artist
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b.
occasional still life subject, and also produced a number of
views of Paris. Around the turn of the century he worked on
decorations for the Caffe Gambrinus and the Stock
Exchange in Naples. He was employed as a teacher at the
Accademia di Belle Arti in Lucca between 1891 and 1921,
eventually rising to the post of director in 1911. His son and
pupil Giovanni was also a landscape artist, and also worked
for some time in Paris. Paintings by Alceste Campriani are in
the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome and elsewhere.
Alceste Campriani studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in
Naples from 1862 to 1869. There he befriended the
painter Giuseppe de Nittis, with whom he painted
landscapes in the open air as part of a group of artists known
as the Scuola di Resina, regarded as the successors to the
Neapolitan landscape artists of the previous generation, led
by Giacinto Gigante, who had been known as the Scuola di
Posillipo. Through de Nittis, Campriani gained an
introduction to the influential Parisian art dealer Adolphe
Goupil, who in 1871 signed a contract with the artist that
lasted until 1884. This allowed his work to be better known
elsewhere in Europe and also in America, although he was
never to achieve the same international reputation and
commercial success as such contemporary Italian artists as
de Nittis, Giovanni Boldini and Federico Zandomeneghi.
Campriani worked for several years in Paris, and also
participated in the annual exhibitions organized by the
Società Promotrice di Belle Arti in Naples, becoming a
member of the jury in 1885. He painted seascapes,
Neapolitan landscapes and genre scenes, as well as the
This pair of oil sketches were among the contents of the
artist’s studio at the time of his death and have remained in
the possession of his descendants until recently. Scenes of
fishermen and fishing boats appear throughout Campriani’s
oeuvre. Similar boats appear, for example, in a large
painting, signed and dated 1900, which appeared on the art
market in London in 1984, while a comparable small oil
sketch of a Neapolitan fishing boat appeared at auction in
Rome in 2007.
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73
VLADIMIR VASILIEVICH PEREPLETCHIKOV
Moscow 1863–1918 Moscow
and characterized by a heightened sense of colour. Paintings
by Perepletchikov were often illustrated in the leading art
magazine Mir iskusstva and were owned by artists such as
Isaak Levitan and Sergei Vinogradov. Perepletchikov’s diaries
record much of interest in the artistic life of Moscow around
the turn of the century, including visits to the homes of the
collectors Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin, all recorded
in a highly opinionated and at times somewhat acidic tone.
When the First World War broke out in August 1914 and
Russian men faced compulsory conscription into the army,
like many artists and intellectuals Perepletchikov found the
situation almost intolerable; as he wrote during this period
of crisis, ‘I am no longer a painter. I have almost forgotten how
to paint.’ The artist was to spend the last years of his career
unable to practice his profession, and died in Moscow
shortly before the war ended. Paintings by Vasily
Perepletchikov, whose appearance is recorded in a 1912
pastel portrait by Sergei Malyutin, are today in the collection
of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and elsewhere.
Sunset over a River
Pastel and gouache on paper
Signed in Russian at the lower right and numbered
or dated 3/4 VII. in the lower right margin
Further signed in Russian and dated 1909. on the
backing sheet Numbered N49 – 1940 on the
backing sheet
Stamped with a Russian stamp on the verso
247 x 373 mm. (9 3/ 4 x 14 5/ 8 in.)
A landscape painter and draughtsman, Vasily Perepletchikov
was a pupil of Alexander Kiselev at the School of Fine Arts
in Moscow and Vasily Polenov at the Moscow School of
Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. A founding member
of the conservative Union of Russian Artists in 1903,
Perepletchikov exhibited with the group in Moscow, St.
Petersburg and elsewhere, and his work was dominated by
lyrical Russian landscapes painted in an Impressionist vein
A stylistically related watercolour view of the river Dvina by
Perepletchikov recently appeared at auction in England.
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74
ORESTE CORTAZZO
Rome 1836–1910 Paris
among the books he illustrated were Eugène Muller’s La
Mionette, published in 1885, and Guy de Maupassant’s
Yvette, published in 1902. Together with Lodovico
Marchetti and Lucio Rossi, Cortazzo also provided drawings
for a lavish illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet, published in London around 1900.
A Parisian Boulevard at Night, with a Newspaper
Vendor
Engraved wood block
102 x 82 x 23 mm., 4 x 3 1/ 4 x 7/ 8 in.
This engraved wood block was used for an illustrated
edition of Guy de Maupassant’s Yvette, a collection of short
stories published in Paris in 1902, with illustrations by
Cortazzo. Maupassant’s story Yvette was first published in Le
Figaro in 1884, and was reprinted as a book the following
year. Cortazzo’s image was used to illustrate the beginning
of the story, in which the two friends Jean de Servigny and
Léon Saval leave the Café Riche and walk along the streets
of Paris: ‘A restless crowd was moving along the boulevard,
that throng peculiar to summer nights, drinking, chatting, and
flowing like a river, filled with a sense of comfort and joy. Here
and there a cafe threw a flood of light upon a knot of patrons
drinking at little tables on the sidewalk, which were covered
with bottles and glasses, hindering the passing of the hurrying
multitude.’
Literature:
Guy de Maupassant, Yvette, Paris, 1902, p.9
Born in Italy, Oreste Cortazzo spent most of his career in
France as a painter of historical and genre scenes, many of
which were produced on commission for the art dealer
Adolphe Goupil. He exhibited infrequently at the Salons
between 1874 and 1885, and also at the Exposition
Universelle in 1878 and 1889. His sentimental narrative
compositions were likely influenced by the rise of
photography in the second half of the 19th century.
Cortazzo also worked as a printmaker and book illustrator;
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ALETHEA GARSTIN
Penzance 1894–1978 Zennor
by the Royal Academy Summer exhibition; at the time the
youngest artist ever to be so honoured. She accompanied
her father when he undertook the summer schools of
painting which he held almost every year in Brittany and
Northern France between 1899 and 1927, and in which
she also participated. She continued to exhibit widely; at
group shows in galleries and at open exhibitions in England
and elsewhere until just before her death. Her first gallery
exhibitions were joint shows with her father, held in London
in 1921 and 1924, and she did not have her first solo
exhibition until 1940. Garstin lived for most of her life in
Penzance, but travelled widely throughout England, Ireland,
and Scotland, often using her small red Morris Eight car as
a mobile studio and producing small paintings of the sites
she visited. She remained active well into old age, with her
final painting trip abroad – a journey around Brittany –
undertaken at the age of eighty-two.
A Breton Girl
Black chalk on paper; a page from a sketchbook
A slight sketch of a standing youth on the verso
300 x 229 mm., 11 3/ 4 x 9 in.
Provenance:
From one of the artist’s sketchbooks, and thence by
descent in the family of the artist.
The daughter and pupil of the painter Norman Garstin,
Mary Dochie Alethea Garstin began painting seriously at the
age of sixteen, and two years later she had a work accepted
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GIUSEPPE CASCIARO
Ortelle 1863–1941 Naples
have first been inspired to take up the medium of pastel in
1885, when a series of pastel drawings by the artist
Francesco Paolo Michetti was shown in Naples. Two years
later, in 1887, Casciaro exhibited a series of eleven pastel
landscapes of his own, and he remained devoted to the
medium throughout his career. Indeed, he may be regarded
as one of the finest practitioners of the art of the pastel
landscape working in Italy during this period.
A Coastal Landscape
Pastel, over an underdrawing in pencil, on brown
paper
Faintly signed and dated GCasciaro / 6 08(?) 07 at
the lower left
Signed, dated and inscribed a Paride / De Marco(?) /
l’amico / GCasciaro. / 1 luglio 1916 napoli at the
lower right
Stamped G. CASCIARO / NAPOLI in a circle in blue
ink on the verso
168 x 331 mm., 6 5/ 8 x 13 in.
Casciaro settled on the hillside quarter of Naples known as
the Vomero, sharing a studio with the painter Attilio Pratella,
and for much of his life his preferred subject matter were
views in and around Naples and the islands of Capri and
Ischia. Between 1892 and 1896 he travelled regularly to
Paris, where he had a one-man exhibition and received
commissions from the dealer Adolphe Goupil. Appointed a
professor at the Accademia in Naples in 1902, by 1906 he
was engaged as a tutor in pastel drawing to the Queen of
Italy, Elena di Savoia. Casciaro exhibited frequently in Naples
and at the Biennale in Venice, and won a bronze medal at
the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. His work was
also exhibited throughout Europe; in Munich, Barcelona,
Prague, Athens and St. Petersburg, as well as in San
Francisco, Tokyo and in South America.
Born in the province of Lecce, Giuseppe Casciaro enjoyed
a long and successful career of some sixty years. He was a
pupil of Filippo Palizzi, Gioacchino Toma, Stanislao Lista and
Domenico Morelli at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples,
where he won numerous prizes. Casciaro developed a
particular proficiency for landscape drawings in pastel,
although he also painted a handful of oil paintings. He may
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JOHN DUNCAN FERGUSSON
Leith 1874–1961 Edinburgh
were particularly influenced by French art of that period.
Their work has had a lasting influence on Scottish
contemporary art.
Boats in the Harbour, Cassis
This is likely to date from Fergusson’s first stay in Paris from
1907 until 1914 when he spent a lot of time in the south of
France. In 1913, he persuaded his fellow Colourist Samuel
John Peploe (1871–1935) to accompany him to Cassis. He
recalled: ‘I had grown tired of the north of France; I wanted
more sun, more colour; I wanted to go south to Cassis . . .
we had his [Peploe’s] birthday party there and, after a lot of
consideration, chose a bottle of Château Lafitte instead of
champagne. Château Lafitte to me now means that happy
lunch on the veranda overlooking Cassis bay sparkling in the
sunshine’ (see Roger Billcliffe, The Scottish Colourists, 1990,
p.37).
Black chalk
112 x 200 mm., 4 1/ 4 x 7 3/ 4 in.
Provenance:
The Artist’s partner, Margaret Morris (1891–1980)
Private Collection
Fergusson is one of the best known of the Scottish
Colourists along with Peploe, Cadell and Hunter. They
were active in the first half of the twentieth century and
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SIR GEORGE CLAUSEN, R.A., R.W.S.
London 1852–1944 Cold Ash
Study of Trees
Coloured chalks on brown paper
298 x 233 mm., 11 3/ 4 x 9 in.
Provenance:
By descent from the artist to his daughter-in-law Mrs
Hugh Clausen
Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, 30th September 1992, lot 7
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79
ANNA AIRY
Greenwich 1882-1964 Playford, nr. Ipswich
b. Blue Tit’s Breakfast
Pen and black ink and watercolour, on paper
washed a pale grey
Signed with the artist’s monogram at the lower
centre
Numbered 15 and inscribed and titled sight 12 1/2 x
8 / “Blue tit’s breakfast” / (to fit frame) on the verso.
330 x 212 mm., 13 x 8 3/ 8 in. [sheet]
a. Land of Plenty
Pen and black ink and watercolour, on paper
washed a pale grey
Signed with the artist’s monogram at the lower
centre
Numbered 11 and inscribed and titled sight 12 x 9
“Land of Plenty” / (to fit frame) at the bottom of the
sheet
338 x 257 mm., 13 1/ 4 x 10 1/ 8 in. [sheet]
Exhibited:
London, The Fine Art Society, Exhibition of Paintings and
Pen and Colour Drawings by Anna Airy, R.E., R.I., R.O.I.,
November 1920, nos.31 and 32.
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b.
A student at the Slade School of Art in London between
1899 and 1903, Anna Airy was a gifted and prolific artist,
adept in a variety of media and techniques. She first
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1905, and continued to
do so almost every year until 1956, showing a total of
around eighty works. By the time of her first one-man show
at the Carfax Gallery in London in 1907 was regarded as
one of the most promising young female painters of her
generation. Airy also exhibited her work at the New English
Art Club, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours
and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In 1952 a
retrospective exhibition of Airy’s paintings, drawings and
prints was held in London, and in the preface to the
catalogue the critic Martin Hardie praised her ‘untiring
patience, a Durer-like analysis, an almost Pre-raphaelite
precision, in recording the minutest detail and the material
structure and anatomy of living organism in pendant fruit,
sprays of blossom, bees, birds, butterflies, struggling twigs or
insect-eaten leaves.’
Anna Airy was particularly admired as a draughtsman, and
her interest in botanical studies was manifest from the
earliest years of her career. On the occasion of an exhibition
of her work in 1915, one critic noted that ‘We have then in
these drawings the expression of passionate sympathy with the
refinements of leaf and stem-forms. We have here the realism
that alone can satisfy an eager love of Nature for herself. What
is novel is the careful art, almost Japanese in spirit, with which
naturalism is controlled and exploited on behalf of
decoration…An artist has not such a conscience for truth to
nature as Miss Airy’s for nothing; not a line is drawn by her
except in the presence of nature. The pen-work is done out of
doors direct from the “model” branch as it grows on a tree,
and the colouring is done in the same circumstances.’
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HENRI ROYER
Nancy 1869–1938 Neuilly-sur-Seine
the same year in which he was admitted into the Légion
d’Honneur. He travelled extensively throughout Europe, as
well as in North and South America.
A Sheet of Studies of Women
At the time of an exhibition of Royer’s work at the Galerie
Jean Charpentier in Paris in 1928, the critic Roger Dardenne
noted that, ‘It is perhaps with the female portrait, however,
that M. Henri Royer shows the fullest measure of his mastery.
The delicacy of temperament, a natural elegance, combined
with a great confidence in his profession, allow him to render,
with a truth full of charm, the faces of women and young girls.’
This sheet of studies may be regarded as preparatory
exercises for the sort of finished drawing in coloured chalks
exemplified by a portrait of a woman reproduced as a
full-page illustration in colour in the Christmas 1923 issue
of the magazine L’Illustration. In comments which may
equally be said to be relevant to the present sheet, the text
accompanying the drawing in L’Illustration noted that ‘This is
one of the pastels in which Henri Royer excels, to whom we
owe, in addition to his fine work as a painter, some admirabe
drawings in coloured chalks. A portrait of a young woman,
treated with astonishing descriptive confidence, light fabrics,
intangible, veiling and revealing the body, the face lit by a
smile . . . A work of expressive grace and luminous harmony.’
Black and red chalk, with touches of white
heightening, on paper laid down on a thin board
Signed Henri Royer. at the lower right centre
476 x 629 mm., 18 3/ 4 x 24 3/ 4 in.
Exhibited:
Mulhouse, Exposition de Mulhouse, 1914
Henri Paul Royer was active as a portraitist and genre
painter, as well as a draughtsman and book illustrator, and
exhibited frequently at the Salon des Artistes Français from
1890 onwards. In 1896 he made his first of many visits to
Brittany, where he produced genre paintings of the life and
customs of the people of Cap-Sizun, south of Finistère, and
the Ile de Sein, a small island off the western tip of Brittany.
He became particularly known for his views of Brittany and
scenes of Breton life, which he showed at the Salons. Royer
won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1900,
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81
EDWARD JOHN BURROW
Wellington 1869–1935 Cheltenham
Originally trained as a chemist and pharmacist, Edward John
Burrow was born in Somerset and studied at Cheltenham
College, later settling in the spa town. Active as a
topographical etcher and draughtsman, he established a
cooperative publishing business in Cheltenham in 1900,
through which he wrote and published several books of
local interest, such as The Ancient Entrenchments and Camps
of Gloucestershire, first published in 1919, and Around and
About Cheltenham, published in 1921. Many of Burrow’s
etchings are commissioned views of public schools and
colleges such as Marlborough, Rugby, Eton and Haileybury.
A London Nocturne
Watercolour, heightened with touches of
bodycolour
Signed and dated Ed J Burrow / 1918 and titled A
London Nocturne in at the lower left and centre.
238 x 164 mm., 9 3/ 8 x 6 1/ 2 in.
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82
TAMARA DE LEMPICKA
Warsaw 1898-1980 Cuernavaca
Literature:
Alain Blondel, Tamara de Lempicka: Catalogue raisonné
1921-1979, Lausanne, 1999, p.433, no. A.23
A Seated Female Nude
Recognized today as an iconic painter of the Art Deco era,
Tamara de Lempicka exhibited for the first time at the Salon
d’Automne in 1922. Her work as a portraitist was greatly
admired, and the late 1920’s and early 1930’s found the
artist at the height of her career, enjoying an exalted position
in Parisian society. De Lempicka’s studies of female nudes
were strongly influenced by the figure style of her teacher
André Lhote. Datable to around 1923, the present sheet
may have been drawn from a posed model in Lhote’s
studio on the rue de Départ in Paris. This drawing may
tentatively be related to a small painting of a similarly posed
female nude, also seen from below and wearing a necklace,
in a private collection.
Pencil
Signed de Lempicka at the lower left
236 x 142 mm., 9 1/ 4 x 5 5/ 8 in.
Provenance:
Private collection, in 1972
Barry Friedman Ltd., New York
Private collection, Spain
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GUSTAVE LOISEAU
such as Maxime Maufra and Henry Moret. He joined the
Société des Artists Indépendants in 1893 and exhibited six
paintings at the group’s annual exhibition; he continued to
exhibit at the Salon des Indépendants nearly every year
thereafter. In Pont-Aven in 1894 Loiseau met Paul Gauguin,
who, impressed with the young artist’s work, gave him a
still life of fruit and flowers. In 1897 he entered into a
contract with the Galerie Durand-Ruel, which allowed the
artist a measure of financial freedom. For the remainder of
his career, Loiseau travelled tirelessly in Brittany, Normandy
and the Ile-de-France, painting numerous landscapes along
the Seine and elsewhere.
Still Life with a Dish of Fried Eggs
Pencil, watercolour and gouache on buff paper
A sketch of a church and surrounding buildings on
the verso
Dated 1923 at the upper left
The verso inscribed and dated cour de la / ??? /
Pontoise / 1922
206 x 273 mm., 8 1/ 8 x 10 3/ 4 in.
Loiseau produced several paintings of still-life compositions,
many of which were done at Pont-Aven between 1922 and
1928. The present sheet is dated 1923, while the sketch of
a church in Pontoise on the verso bears a date of the
previous year. The ceramic dish in which the eggs are
placed is found in several still life compositions by Loiseau of
the 1920s and early 1930s.
Abandoning a career as a house painter, Gustave Loiseau
took up painting around 1884 and had devoted himself to
it entirely by 1887. Apart from a year at the Ecole des Arts
Décoratifs, he was mostly self-taught. In 1890 he stayed for
some months in the town of Pont-Aven in Brittany, joining
the little artistic community there and befriending painters
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RUSKIN SPEAR, R.A.
Hammersmith 1911–1990 London
Drawn in 1932, the present sheet is a portrait of the artist’s
father Augustus Spear. The drawing was singled out for
praise by Ruskin Spear’s biographer Mervyn Levy: ‘It is in
his portraits of his family and his friends that his essential
humanity is most apparent, although his empathy with his
subject is always conveyed with restraint. This applies in
particular to his portrayals of old age. The emotive content is
always tightly controlled – concise and contained . . . There is
compassion without sentimentality. Even in the study of the
painter’s father, drawn in 1932 when the artist was only
twenty-one, there is no excess of feeling, no self-indulgence. It
is a statement about old age, brilliantly drawn and strikingly
objective. I know of no better example of the artist’s powers of
draughtsmanship. The opposition of tension and relaxation is
superbly realized in the relaxed, bowed head, the tension in
the resting arm and left leg, and the relaxation of the left arm
and the right leg.’
The Artist’s Father Seated in an Interior
Pencil and black chalk, with stumping, with touches
of orange and white chalk, on buff paper
307 x 366 mm., 12 1/ 8 x 14 3/ 8 in.
Provenance:
Lady Gwendolen Herbert
Literature:
Mervyn Levy, Ruskin Spear, London, 1985, p.31,
illustrated p.12, fig.4
Exhibited:
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Ruskin Spear R.A.: A
Retrospective Exhibition, 1980, no.79
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85
ODILON ROCHE
Châteauneuf-sur-Loire 1868–1947 Six-Fours
une époque médiocre.’ In 1917 Roche’s friend Léonce
Bénédite, the executor of Rodin’s will and soon to be the
first curator of the Musée Rodin, asked him to classify the
entire contents of the sculptor’s studio, including countless
boxes of loose drawings and watercolours.
Study of a Standing Draped Woman, Seen from
Behind
The decade Roche sent on this immense project gave him
ample opportunity to study Rodin’s distinctive style and
technique as a draughtsman. As a result Roche’s own
drawings and watercolours, especially of female nudes,
display the profound influence of those of the great sculptor.
(He also assembled a large number of drawings by Rodin
for his own collection; most of these were dispersed at
auction in 1933.) On his retirement in 1931, Roche settled
in Six-Fours-les Plages in the Var, southwest of Toulon,
where he continued to paint his watercolours, now
including coastal scenes and landscapes. He does not seem
to have ever sold or exhibited his work, and it was not until
the early 1970’s, some twenty-five years after his death,
that a group of Roche’s drawings was discovered at a
framer’s shop in Saint-Tropez.
Pencil and watercolour
Inscribed A Rodin at the lower right
Stamped with a variant of the Roche mark (Lugt
2007e) at the lower right
337 x 274 mm., 13 1/ 4 x 10 3/ 4 in.
An amateur artist and a disciple of Auguste Rodin, Odilon
Roche was one of the more fascinating characters in Paris in
the first quarter of the 20th century. In 1902 he opened a
shop in Montmartre selling artists’ supplies, counting among
his customers Pissarro and Renoir. A second shop selling
Persian and Chinese antiques soon became a fashionable
rendezvous for cultured Parisians, among them the novelist
Colette, who described Roche as ‘un homme fastueux dans
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RAYMOND
1933
Philips Radio: Design for a Poster
Watercolour
Signed and dated RAYMOND. 1933 at the upper
right
490 x 340 mm., 19 1/ 4 x 13 3/ 8 in.
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RICHARD BARRETT TALBOT KELLY
1896–1971
A Hovering Kingfisher
Signed with monogram centre left
Pen and brown ink and watercolour on oatmeal
paper
194 x 143 mm., 7 1/ 2 x 5 1/ 2 in.
Kelly served in the Artillery until 1929 and concentrated on
drawing birds in watercolour from the 1920s. He was art
master at Rugby School.
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STEPHEN ROWLAND PIERCE, F.R.I.B.A., F.S.A.
1896–1966
City Hall in Norwich, designed with James and completed
in 1938. In the same year Pierce was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Institute of British Architects, and later served as its
Vice-President between 1951 and 1955. He also worked in
the field of town planning, and published Planning: The
Architect’s Handbook, which was issued in several editions.
Pierce served as a planning consultant in Norwich,
Southampton, Malta and elsewhere, and taught at the
British School in Rome. Pierce owned a large collection of
early English drawings and watercolours, dispersed at
auction after his death.
The Bombed House
Watercolour on thick card
Signed and dated S. Rowland Pierce 1941 at the
lower right
345 x 271 mm., 13 5/ 8 x 10 5/ 8 in.
An architect and town planning consultant, Stephen
Rowland Pierce was awarded the Rome Scholarship in
Architecture in 1921 and studied at the British School at
Rome. Much of his architectural work was in the form of
civic buildings, often in partnership with the architect Charles
Holloway James, such as the town hall of Slough,
constructed in 1936, and the Hertford County Hall, built in
1940. His best-known work as an architect, however, is the
The present sheet was probably drawn during the Blitz in
London. At the time Rowland Pierce made the drawing, he
was serving as Director of Architectural Studies at the
Hastings School of Art, a post he held between 1936 and
1942. Between 1941 and 1942 he was also a lecturer at
the School of Architecture at Manchester University.
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ERICH WOLFSFELD
Krojanke 1884–1956 London
devoted to printmaking, but by 1912 had begun painting in
oils, although he seems to have always preferred to work
on treated paper, rather than canvas. He travelled widely,
and was drawn in particular to North Africa and the Middle
East. Although he was a popular and respected teacher at
the Akademie in Berlin, as a German Jew Wolfsfeld was
forced to resign from the school in 1935, and three years
later settled in England, bringing much of his work with him.
Study of an Arab Girl
Oil, black chalk and coloured chalks, with traces of
squaring in pencil, on buff paper
Signed Erich Wolfsfeld at the lower right
359 x 286 mm., 14 1/ 8 x 11 1/ 8 in.
The present sheet was included in the seminal retrospective
exhibition of Wolfsfeld’s work held at the Derby Art Gallery
in 1953, three years before the artist’s death. The exhibition
included a total of 163 paintings, drawings and etchings,
dating from as early as 1913. As one modern critic has
noted of Wolfsfeld, ‘The simple reality of what he saw on his
travels did not move him either to exaggerate or caricature
his subject matter . . . His compassionate vision records the
dignity of peoples thoroughly accustomed to adversity . . . In [oil
paint] and other media, such as chalk or pen and wash,
Wolfsfeld demonstrated a wonderful certainty yet fluency in
his drawing.’
Provenance:
Among the contents of the artist’s studio at his death
Thence by descent to his stepson, Dr. Max Block,
Mossley Hill, Liverpool, until 2009
Exhibited:
Derby, Derby Art Gallery, Erich Wolfsfeld, 1953
Erich Wolfsfeld studied at the Berlin Academy of Arts and
the Académie Julien in Paris. His early career was largely
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STANLEY ROY BADMIN, R.W.S.
Sydenham 1906–1989 Bignor
contrives, with the aid of washes of tender colour, to preserve
a seemly order in all his drawings.’ Badmin is today best
known for his watercolour landscapes; charming and
affectionate depictions of the English countryside. In the
1940s and 1950s he illustrated a number of books on
pastoral or topographical themes, notably Village and Town,
Trees in Britain and The British Countryside in Colour. Among
his other commercial projects were designs for Shell posters
depicting the various counties of England, as well as covers
and illustrations for Reader’s Digest and Radio Times
magazines, advertising images, calendars and greeting cards.
As one recent author has noted of Badmin, ‘his craft has
been based on hard work and experience, and his talent on a
love for and deep knowledge of the British countryside.’
St. Ives, Cornwall
Watercolour, heightened with touches of gouache
Signed and inscribed St. Ives. / S.R. Badmin at the
lower right
287 x 386 mm., 11 3/ 8 x 15 1/ 4 in. [sheet]
A gifted watercolourist and printmaker, S. R. Badmin
became, at the age of twenty-six, one of the youngest
Associate members of the Royal Society of Painters in
Watercolours. At the exhibition of the Society in 1932, the
first to which he contributed, his work was singled out for
particular praise by several reviewers, one of whom wrote
that ‘The most interesting drawings in this show are provided
by S.R. Badmin, a young etcher who uses line with almost an
etcher’s delicacy and precision. Badmin is almost miniaturist
in the fineness of his work he packs into a small picture area,
but in spite of all this wealth of beautifully designed detail, he
Badmin produced a handful of views of the picturesque
fishing port of St. Ives in Cornwall. Another view of the
town, inscribed by the artist ‘A Corner of St. Ives’ and ‘The
Room with the View’, was on the London art market in 1985,
while a watercolour of St. Ives from Porthminster was
included at the Autumn 1953 exhibition of the Royal
Watercolour Society.
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JOHN NORTHCOTE NASH, R.A.
Kensington 1893–1977 Colchester
Olive Trees near Clavier, Grasse, France
Inscribed with colour notes
Watercolour over pencil on laid paper, squared for
transfer
224 x 171 mm., 8 3/ 4 x 6 3/ 4 in.
Provenance:
New Grafton Gallery
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MAXWELL ASHBY ARMFIELD, R.W.S.
Ringwood 1881–1972 Dorset
He was also a prolific and accomplished illustrator and
decorative artist, and found the time to publish a number of
books of poetry, travel accounts and technical guides to
tempera painting. Although his work was largely forgotten
after the Second World War, Armfield lived to see a
reassessment of his oeuvre take place in the 1970s.
Three Feathers
Tempera on board
Signed with the artist’s monogram and numbered
OP / 253 at the upper right
253 x 305 mm., 10 x 12 in.
The present work is numbered by the artist as Opus 253,
which would suggest an approximate date of 1948; it was
first exhibited the following year. Writing a few years later,
Armfield described the particular appeal of tempera, noting
that ‘only in this apparently most material and restricted
medium could I learn to express in this age, those fundamental
things which could not at the present time find acceptance in
a direct or ostensible way.’ In another publication, Armfield
wrote, ‘Tempera because of the exigencies of material is
specially suitable for smallish pictures, gay and rich in
colour . . . the peculiarities of the medium itself render it most
suitable for the presentation of flowers, fruit, and the small
beasts naturally associated with them: for sky, pebbles, and
generally, the smaller details of nature . . .’
Provenance:
Kensington Art Gallery, London, in 1949
Purchased from them by Mrs. Carrow, London
Mrs. Gladys Lilian Grant and thence by descent until 2006
Maxwell Armfield began experimenting with painting in
tempera while a student in Birmingham, although he only
began taking up the medium more seriously around 1910.
Best known for his portraits, landscapes and still life paintings
in tempera, Armfield exhibited at the Royal Academy, the
New English Art Club and the Royal Watercolour Society.
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c.
b.
93
CHARLES FREDERICK TUNNICLIFFE, R.A.
Langley 1901–1979 Anglesey
Literature:
Robert Gillmor, Charles F. Tunnicliffe. RA: The Composition
Drawings, London, 1986, p.48, no.269
a. Spider Monkeys
b. De Brazza’s Guenon
c. Spider Monkeys
Charles Tunnicliffe was arguably the most important British
wildlife artist of the second half of the 20th century. As his
close friend and fellow artist Kyffin Williams noted of him,
‘The whole of nature absorbed him and he was more sensitive
to it than any man I have ever met; but it was nature in the
particular that motivated his probing eye and forced him to
live a life of obsession that produced a body of work that has
hardly been equalled by any British artist.’
Watercolour, heightened with gouache, over an
underdrawing in pencil
a. 102 x 50 mm., 4 x 2 in. [sheet]
b. 163 x 73 mm., 6 3/ 8 x 2 7/ 8 in. [image]
c. 102 x 50 mm., 4 x 2 in. [sheet]
The largest of these three drawings is a preparatory study
for Tunnicliffe’s painting De Brazza’s Guenon, exhibited at
the Royal Academy in 1967. The two studies of spider
monkeys are related to a finished watercolour of Spider
Monkeys shown at the Royal Academy in 1973.
Provenance:
Bunny Bird Fine Art, London
109
GPFA
a.
b.
94
These two drawings date from the mid 1960s.
The drawings in nos. 94 and 95 were in the artist’s studio
on his death in 1979 and were subsequently exhibited in
`Charles F. Tunnicliffe, RA – The Composition Drawings’ at
the Tryon and Moorland Gallery, Cork St., London from
5th to 26th March 1986. Since then they have been in a
private European collection.
a. Red-Breasted Mergansers
97 x 171 mm., 3 3/ 4 x 6 3/ 4 in.
b. Black-headed and Common Gulls
85 x 149 mm., 3 1/ 4 x 5 3/ 4 in.
110
GPFA
a.
b.
95
This dates from the 1960s.
a. Black-headed Gulls asleep
b. Roseate Terns displaying
92 x 111 mm., 3 1/ 2 x 4 1/ 4 in.
63 x 105 mm., 2 1/ 2 x 4 in.
This is a sketch for a watercolour exhibited at the Tryon
Gallery, Bird Artists of the World, 1963.
111
SOFA
a.
96
JOHN LANGLEY HOWARD
Montclair 1902–1999 San Francisco
b. Apples on Earth
a. Succulent
Watercolour on paper, laid down on board
Signed and dated JOHN LANGLEY HOWARD ’67 at
the lower right
214 x 285 mm., 8 3/ 8 x 11 1/ 4 in. [sheet]
Grey ink and wash on paper
Signed with initials and dated JLH ’49 at the lower
right centre
Further inscribed PW 700 / 1949 / Mill Valley / 300on the verso
203 x 230 mm., 8 x 9 in. [sheet]
Provenance:
Garzoli Gallery, San Rafael, California, in 1996
Charles Ryskamp, Princeton.
112
SOFA
b.
California’s achievements in industry and agriculture, and
the artist’s decision to devote his Industry mural to the
depiction of a group of unemployed workers, combined
with the subjects chosen by some of the other equally
politicized artists working on the same project, led to
considerable controversy. After the outbreak of World War
II, however, Howard’s work began to move away from
social commentary and towards a renewed focus on
landscapes, devoid of human figures, as well as still life and
natural history subjects. Between 1953 and 1965 he
worked as an illustrator for Scientific American magazine,
creating many covers that emphasized the delicacy and
beauty of objects found in the natural world. He lived for
some time in Mexico, Greece and London before settling
in California for good in 1970.
Born into a family of artists and architects, John Langley
Howard was raised in California and studied at the California
Guild of Arts and Crafts in Oakland before completing his
training at the Art Students League in New York in 1924.
He worked mainly in tempera, watercolour and oil, and
also took up etching. Howard held his first one-man
exhibition at the Modern Gallery in San Francisco in 1927,
and the following year shared a joint exhibition with his
older brothers Charles and Robert; in a review of the show
one critic noted that, of the three Howard brothers, ‘John
Langley is the poet, the mystic and the most complex...there
predominates in his work a certain quality, an element of
sentiment that escapes definition but is the unmistakable trait
by which one recognizes deeper art.’
With the onset of the Depression, Howard began to
engage in political discourse and incorporate Marxist themes
in his work, which often emphasized the plight of the
working classes. This was perhaps most explicit in a
commission he received in 1934 for a mural to decorate
part the interior of the Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill in San
Francisco. The frescoes were intended as a celebration of
The artist once noted that ‘I think of painting as poetry and I
think of myself as a representational poet. I want to describe
my subject minutely, but I also want to describe my emotional
response to it . . . what I’m doing is making a self-portrait in a
peculiar kind of way.’
113
SOFA
97
RENÉ GRUAU
Covignano 1909–2004 Rome
drawings of the latest fashions for the newspaper Le Figaro
and the fashion magazine Femina. He also recorded the
collections of such designers as Pierre Balmain, Jacques Fath,
Jeanne Lanvin, Jean Patou and, in particular, Christian Dior.
By the end of the Second World War his reputation was
firmly established, and had spread beyond France and Italy.
Gruau produced numerous designs for the covers of fashion
magazines, notably Vogue, International Textiles, L’Officiel de
la Couture et de la Mode de Paris and Club.
Design for the Cover of Sir Magazine (No.4, 1964)
Brush and black ink, gouache, and green film, over a
pencil underdrawing, on paper
Signed with the initial *G at the lower right
410 x 287 mm., 16 1/ 8 x 11 1/ 4 in.
This drawing is a design for the cover of a 1964 issue of the
magazine Sir, a quarterly publication devoted to male
fashion. Between 1957 and 1972 Gruau produced many
cover designs, as well as illustrations, for the magazine.
Arguably the most famous fashion illustrator of the 20th
century, René Gruau was born in Italy and settled in Paris in
the early 1930s, where he found employment providing
114
SOFA
98
PAUL HOGARTH, R.A.
Kendal 1917–2001 Cirencester
The architectural historian Peter Blake has noted that ‘Paul
Hogarth is not exactly a recorder of architecture, he is a lover
of buildings. He idealises them, romanticizes them, makes fun
of them, and ultimately identifies with them. His drawings and
watercolour washes are like love letters to buildings; and, like
love letters, they exaggerate. They make you smile. Not many
artists know how to get a building to make you smile. Hogarth
knows.’ A similar sentiment was expressed by the architect
Sir Hugh Casson, who has said that ‘There’s nobody to touch
Paul Hogarth for catching a building’s likeness – dead right
without a trace of laborious correctness.’
Art Nouveau Apartment Building, Geneva
Watercolour over an underdrawing in pencil, on
thick white paper
Signed, dated and inscribed Paul Hogarth ’87 Art
Nouveau apartment house, Quai Wilson, Geneva at
the lower left centre
Further inscribed Constance’s flat / Sebastian at the
lower left
572 x 463 mm., 22 1/ 2 x 18 1/ 4 in. [sheet]
115
SOFA
99
MICHAEL KOTASEK
Born 1962
Born in upstate New York in 1962, P. Michael Kotasek
received his degree in Fine Art from Syracuse University and
works in and around the town of Sag Harbor on Long
Island, New York. His landscapes and still life subjects are
executed primarily in watercolour and tempera, although
more recently he has been working in oils. The subject of
much of his work, which has won several prizes, is devoted
to the landscapes, farms and houses of the eastern end of
Long Island.
Try Pots
Watercolour, over an underdrawing in pencil
Signed and dated PM KOTASEK 05 at the lower left
492 x 673 mm., 19 3/ 8 x 26 1/ 2 in. [sheet]
Provenance:
Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbor, New York
A try pot is a large cast iron vessel used to remove and
render down the oil from whale blubber. Try pots were
used extensively in the New England whaling industry in the
18th and 19th centuries.
116
SOFA
100
MARK ADLINGTON
Born 1965
Based in London, Mark Adlington studied at the City and
Guilds of London School of Art, and is best known as a
painter and draughtsman of wild animals. This watercolour
is part of a recent series of drawings and paintings of the
animals of the Arabian peninsula. The artist has spent part of
the last few years in the Middle East, studying animals in
Oman, which has some of the last wild habitats of several
endangered species native to the region, and at the
Breeding Centre for Endangered Arabian Wildlife in Sharjah
in the United Arab Emirates. The Arabian leopard, once
found throughout the peninsula, now survives in the wild
only in very small numbers – thought to be less than two
hundred mature individuals – and remains in danger of
extinction.
An Arabian Leopard
Watercolour
Signed with initials and dated MA/08 at the lower left
285 x 419 mm., 11 1/ 4 x 16 1/ 2 in.
117
INDEX OF ARTISTS
ADLINGTON, Mark
AIRY, Anna
ARMFIELD, Maxwell
BADMIN, Stanley Roy
BEAUCLERK, Lady Diana
no.100
EDRIDGE, Henry
no.79
nos.43–44
ENGLISH SCHOOL, circa 1790
no.19
FARINGTON, Joseph
no.17
FERGUSSON, John Duncan
no.77
FIELDING, Anthony Vandyke Copley
no.35
no.9
no.90
no.8
BENDEMANN, Eduard
no.41
FLORENTINE SCHOOL, 16th Century no.1
BESNARD, Albert
no.57
FRANCIA, Alexandre Thomas
no.49
BESSA, Pancrace
no.23
FRASER GARDEN, William
no.70
BEVERLY, William Roxby
BISON, Giuseppe Bernardino
nos.59–60
FRENCH SCHOOL, 1791 (J.N.d.B)
no.9
no.7
FRENCH SHCOOL, circa 1800
no.13
BONVIN, François
no.27
BUCKLER, John Chessell
no.34
GARSTIN, Alethea
no.75
BURROW, Edward John
no.81
GEVRIL, Daniel
no.28
GIGANTE, Giacinto
no.37
CAMPRIANI, Alceste
no.72
GRIFFITH, Moses
no.20
CARTER, Henry Barlow
no.67
GRUAU, René
no.97
CASCIARO, Giuseppe
no.76
CELS, Jean-Michel
no.24
HAMILTON, Hugh Douglas
no.10
CHALON, Alfred Edward
no.31
HILLS, Robert
no.33
CLAUSEN, Sir George
no.78
HOARE OF BATH, William
CORTAZZO, Oreste
no.74
HOGARTH, Paul
no.98
HOLLAND, James
no.40
HOWARD, John Langley
no.96
HUET, Nicolas II
no.12
HUNT, Alfred William
no.69
JACKSON, Samuel
no.52
COSWAY, Richard
DELLA BELLA, Stefano
no.5
no.2
DE SPECHT, Emile
no.50
DOWNMAN, John
no.11
DUNCAN, Edward
no.66
118
no.4
JUTSUM, Henry
no.64
KELLY, Richard Barrett Talbot
no.87
KOTASEK, Michael
no.99
ROMNEY, George
no.6
ROWBOTHAM, Thomas Leeson
no.22
ROYER, Henri
no.80
SANDBY, Paul
nos.16 & 26
LEAR, Edward
no.58
SMIRKE, Mary
no.32
LECOMTE, Paul
no.63
SMITH, John Rubens
no.25
LEITCH, William Leighton
no.65
SMITH, Edward Dalton
LEMPICKA, Tamara de
no.82
SOMM, Henry
no.56
LINNELL, James Thomas
no.42
SPEAR, Ruskin
no.84
LOISEAU, Gustave
no.83
TUDOR, Thomas
no.21
MARTIN, John
no.36
MEYER, Lazare
no.46
nos.53–54
TUNNICLIFFE, Charles Frederick nos.93–95
UNDERWOOD, Thomas Richard
no.29
NAFTEL, Paul Jacob
no.47
NASH, John
no.91
VAN DER ULFT, Jacob
NIXON, John
no.18
VARLEY, John
no.45
ORPEN, Sir William
no.71
WESTALL, Richard
no.14
WOLFSFELD, Erich
no.89
no.3
PEREPLETCHIKOV, Vasily
no.73
WYLD, William
PIERCE, Stephen Rowland
no.88
WYLLIE, William Lionel
no.68
PORTER, Sir Robert Kerr
no.15
PROUT, Samuel
no.51
YATMAN, William Hamilton
no.48
PYNE, James Baker
no.61
PYNE, William Henry
no.30
ZUBER, Henri
no.55
RAYMOND
no.86
ROCHE, Odilon
no.85
ROCHEGROSSE, Georges Antoine
no.62
119
nos.38–39
Stephen Ongpin has more than twenty years of experience as a dealer in Old Master and 19th century
drawings. He began his career in 1986 at the long-established gallery of P. & D. Colnaghi, working at
the firm's New York branch for ten years before moving to London in 1996. Working closely with
Jean-Luc Baroni, Stephen was responsible for organizing the drawings exhibitions mounted by the
gallery, and for researching, writing, and editing their annual catalogues of Master Drawings. In 2001
he joined Baroni in forming Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd. in London, with Stephen continuing to assume
responsibility for the new firm's drawing department, organizing their successful drawings exhibitions
and writing the accompanying catalogues. He has to date researched and written nearly thirty scholarly
catalogues of drawings. Since 2006 Stephen has worked as an independent dealer and consultant in
the field of Old Master, 19th century and Modern drawings, assisted by Lara Smith-Bosanquet, and
sharing a gallery in St. James's in London with Guy Peppiatt. The gallery exhibits at several art fairs,
including the Salon du Dessin in Paris and The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht in March, and Art
Antiques London in June. Stephen Ongpin Fine Art mounts annual exhibitions of drawings in both London
and New York, and also issues regular catalogues.
Guy Peppiatt started his working life at Dulwich Picture Gallery before joining Sotheby's British Pictures
department in 1993. He quickly specialised in early British drawings and watercolours and took over
the running of Sotheby's Topographical and Travel sales. Topographical views, whether they be of Britain
or worldwide, have remained an abiding passion. Guy left Sotheby's in early 2004 and has worked as
a dealer since then, first based at home, and now in a gallery in St James's, which he shares with Stephen
Ongpin. Guy's main yearly exhibition of early drawings and watercolours is in May and June and he also
exhibits at the Watercolours and Works on Paper Fair in early February, the BADA Fair in March, the Art
Antiques London Fair in June and the Winter Olympia Art and Antiques Fair in November. He also advises
clients on their collections, buys and sells on their behalf and can provide insurance valuations.
Stephen Ongpin Fine Art
Tel.+44 (0) 20 7930 8813
or + 44 (0)7710 328 627
[email protected]
www.stephenongpin.com
Guy Peppiatt Fine Art
Tel.+44 (0) 20 7930 3839
or +44 (0)7956 968 284
[email protected]
www.peppiattfineart.co.uk
120

catalogue - Guy Peppiatt Fine Art

Transcription

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