Friday, December 31, 2010

Railway Kiosk





The railways enabled both large-scale and much quicker distribution of newspapers from London. By 1875 the train service for the London newspapers left Euston at 5.15am, and arrived in Manchester by 10 o’clock. It was not quite a world of instant news but it had been a great transformation.

Abraham Solomon - The Bashful Lover




Price Realized £2,400

signed and dated 'A Solomon 1854' (lower right) inscribed and numbered: 'No 1 The Bashful Lover/A Solomon' (on a label attached to the reverse)
oil on canvas
13½ x 17 in. (33.5 x 43.2 cm.)

Edgar Hunt - Chickens, Ducks and Ducklings paddling



sold with Puppies and Pigeons playing by a kennel
Price Realized £26,450

Chickens, Ducks and Ducklings paddling; and Puppies and Pigeons playing by a kennel
the former signed and dated 'E Hunt 1933' (lower left); the latter signed and dated 'E Hunt/1933' (lower left)
oil on canvas
8 x 11 in. (20 x 28 cm.) (each)
a pair (2)

Henry Dawson - Calm at the end of the day




Price Realized £4,113

signed and dated 'H Dawson/1863' (lower right)
oil on canvas
20 x 30 in. (50.8 x 76.3 cm.)

Henry Dawson - Liverpool



Price Realized £6,573

signed and dated '18 H Dawson 70' (lower left)
oil on panel
9 x 11¾ in. (22.8 x 29.8 cm.)

The six years he spent in Liverpool constituted a defining period for Dawson, and he maintained ties with friends and patrons after his departure in 1850. This painting, dated 1870, locates the viewer at a distance from the city, though the buildings on the skyline are rendered with admirable detail. However it is the strong sense of space, and of fresh estuary air, which defines this work and lends it atmospheric appeal.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Three Girls


Stolen paintings


[Empty frames from which thieves took "Storm on the Sea of Galilee," left background, by Rembrandt and "The Concert," right foreground, by Vermeer, remain on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The paintings were among more than a dozen works stolen from the museum 20 years ago in what is considered the largest art theft in history. AP Photo/Josh Reynolds]

MADRID.- Some of the most important works by recognized geniuses like Picasso, Matisse, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Van Goh, Cézanne and Sorolla were stolen years ago and the Spanish National Police, which tracks them, has released a video with images of the most wanted paintings.
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These works of art, some stolen more than 20 years ago could reach the black market "at an exorbitant price, " according to specialist officers working in their search and that belong to the Heritage Brigade, of the UDEV the Office of the General Commissioner of the Judicial Police.

Only one of the pieces investigated by agents, according to the National Police, the oil Auvers Sur Oise, Paul Cézanne, is valued at 4.8 million euros. This painting was stolen in January 2000 from the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford (United Kingdom). Le Pigeon aux petits pois by Pablo Picasso, and La Pastorale, by Matisse are some of the most looked for paintings.

Also, more than ten years ago, ten masterpieces valued at 250 million, including Storm on the Sea of Galilee, a painting by Rembrandt made in 1663, were stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston.

Experts are also trying to trace the whereabouts of two works by Van Gogh: Brooms and Red Poppies, stolen in Giza (Egypt) and View of the Sea at Scheveningen, stolen in December 2002 from the museum named after the artist in Amsterdam.

The officers also seek a painting by Sorolla, El Santero of the Brotherhood, stolen earlier this year from the house museum Benlliure in Valencia and a work by Toulouse Lautrec, Lady with a Hat, stolen in Italy.

But the specialists who have the database of stolen works of art, called Dulcinea, have been looking for some works for over 20 years, some of these were stolen from the Royal Palace in Madrid in August 1989: Unknown Lady Hand and San Carlos Borromeo, in Bayeau both by Velázquez, and Portrait of a Lady by Juan Carreno de Miranda.

More than 8,000 paintings, sculptures, carvings, architectural or archaeological items are recorded in the computer file Dulcinea, a pioneer system in Spain

Charles Hunt - The Young Hairdresser




Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 3,375 GBP

signed and dated l.r.: C. Hunt 66; signed and inscribed on reverse: C. Hunt / 5 Hope Terrace / Walham Green / London

oil on canvas

33 by 26 cm.; 13 by 10¼ in.

Charles Hunt - A Gft for the Lady




Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 10,000 GBP

signed l.r.: C Hunt / 91

oil on canvas
51 by 76 cm.; 20 by 30 in

Charles Hunt - The Stolen Child



signed and initials and dated l.r.: C.H./ 74; signed and inscribed on reverse: The Stolen Child/ Chas Hunt

oil on panel



Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 5,000 GBP

20.5 by 29 cm.; 8 by 11 ½ in.

'Stolen children were great subjects with the Victorians. Here a little girl has been stolen and is just having her smart clothes removed. But she has been traced and the policeman (no great shakes, is he?) is coming in at the door, faced by the defiant little boy. The colour of the patch-work quilt is pleasing and I like the attitude of the little boy, full of fight.' Sir David Scott

Charles Hunt's The Stolen Child has as its setting the squalid garret of an impoverished family. They have abducted a child, hoping presumably to demand a ransom for her return to her own parents. The stolen child stands before a villainous looking woman, stripped to her undergarments, and restrained by a rough hand at her neck. At the doorway stands a policeman who has uncovered the crime, and who arrives to rescue the child.

Hunt's genre subjects serve as commentaries on the lives of the poor and dispossessed in the period, whether treated critically with cold dispassion or as on other occasions with humour. Many of his subjects were set in Ireland, or represent Irish migrants to England. The two women shown, and the two other children – one of whom cowers in the background while the other seems willing to stand up to and fight the approaching officer – are surely intended to be identified as Irish, by the style of their dress and physical appearance, as well as by motifs, such as the potatoes and cabbages strewn across the floor in the foregrounds, which correspond to disparaging racial stereotypes of the period. Their menfolk, who are assumed to have been responsible for the theft of the child, are absent, presumably out on some nefarious business, their clay pipes rest on the mantle-shelf. Graham Reynolds regarded Charles Hunt as one of a group of 'unknown artists who painted modern life in the 1850s and [who] attained a standard of achievement which ensures their continuing interest' (Victorian Painting, pp. 113-6).

A larger version of this subject was sold by Sotheby's in New York on 22 February 1989, lot 431.

Marcus Stone - The End of the Story




signed and dated l.l.: MARCUS STONE/ 1900. ; inscribed on a label pasted to the reverse


oil on canvas


Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 43,200 GBP

The End of the Story was one of thirty-nine pictures by living artists commissioned by Agnews and exhibited in November and December 1900. It has all the hallmarks of the very best of Stone's romantic images of idealised womanhood and idyllic notions of history, beautifully conceived in the suave style which made him so popular as an artist and encouraged the sale of many thousands of prints of his work. The pose of the figure appears to have been based on a painting made popular by the sale of a photogravure printed by Frost and Reed entitled Love at First Sight, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891.

The pleasant and successful combination of an attractive young lady in eighteenth century costume, a glorious English garden and a benevolent pet cat, became Marcus Stone's most recognisable image in the 1890s. Stone adored the feline companions who shared his home in Kensington and prowled the garden which backed on to that of Frederic Leighton. Stone made many sketches of his favourite pets stretched out on the lawns or curled in front of the stove in the studio. Two sketches of a tabby cat, probably the same one which appears in The End of the Story, are reproduced in the Art Annual's appreciation of Stone's work published in 1896. The paintings in which cats appear so frequently almost without exception depict women in idle reverie, awaiting lovers or reading amorous correspondence as in The First Love Letter of 1889. The End of the Story depicts a fashionable young lady of the Regency period, absorbed in the conclusion of a tale read whilst seated in a shaded corner of a summer garden. The terrace with classical urns had been painted in several other works by Stone, including The First Love Letter and is the subject of a watercolour sketch reproduced in the Art Annual. This watercolour appears to have been used to paint the background of The End of The Story, although the wall and urns are seen from a more perpendicular angle. As the Art Annual noted so succinctly; 'Perhaps the best way of describing the character of his pictures would be to say that they reflect the spirit of nature rather than her exact aspect. All her ways and customs have been by him examined with extreme care, and copious notes have been during many years taken of her phasese. Meanwhile, he has on the knowledge acquired in this way, built up a conviction of his own about the way in which she should be represented. It may be termed a convention, but at all events it is one that gives him the opportunities which he desires most, and it enables him to make sure of getting that particular decorative atmosphere in which he prefers to invest his favourite subjects.' (Marcus Stone, Art Annual, 1896, pg. 29)




PROVENANCE

Sotheby's, 9 April 1980, lot 44


EXHIBITED


Agnew's, English Art in 1900, November - December 1900



CATALOGUE NOTE


The End of the Story was one of thirty-nine pictures by living artists commissioned by Agnews and exhibited in November and December 1900. It has all the hallmarks of the very best of Stone's romantic images of idealised womanhood and idyllic notions of history, beautifully conceived in the suave style which made him so popular as an artist and encouraged the sale of many thousands of prints of his work. The pose of the figure appears to have been based on a painting made popular by the sale of a photogravure printed by Frost and Reed entitled Love at First Sight, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891.

The pleasant and successful combination of an attractive young lady in eighteenth century costume, a glorious English garden and a benevolent pet cat, became Marcus Stone's most recognisable image in the 1890s. Stone adored the feline companions who shared his home in Kensington and prowled the garden which backed on to that of Frederic Leighton. Stone made many sketches of his favourite pets stretched out on the lawns or curled in front of the stove in the studio. Two sketches of a tabby cat, probably the same one which appears in The End of the Story, are reproduced in the Art Annual's appreciation of Stone's work published in 1896. The paintings in which cats appear so frequently almost without exception depict women in idle reverie, awaiting lovers or reading amorous correspondence as in The First Love Letter of 1889. The End of the Story depicts a fashionable young lady of the Regency period, absorbed in the conclusion of a tale read whilst seated in a shaded corner of a summer garden. The terrace with classical urns had been painted in several other works by Stone, including The First Love Letter and is the subject of a watercolour sketch reproduced in the Art Annual. This watercolour appears to have been used to paint the background of The End of The Story, although the wall and urns are seen from a more perpendicular angle. As the Art Annual noted so succinctly; 'Perhaps the best way of describing the character of his pictures would be to say that they reflect the spirit of nature rather than her exact aspect. All her ways and customs have been by him examined with extreme care, and copious notes have been during many years taken of her phasese. Meanwhile, he has on the knowledge acquired in this way, built up a conviction of his own about the way in which she should be represented. It may be termed a convention, but at all events it is one that gives him the opportunities which he desires most, and it enables him to make sure of getting that particular decorative atmosphere in which he prefers to invest his favourite subjects.' (Marcus Stone, Art Annual, 1896, pg. 29)

(Sir) George Clausen - Flora, the Gypsy Flower Seller



Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 24,000 GBP

signed and dated u.r.: G. CLAUSEN./.1883.

watercolour
30 by 26 cm. , 11 3/4 by 10 1/4 in

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Francis Frith - Pyramids



'THE PYRAMIDS OF SAKKÁRAH, FROM THE NORTH EAST'

plate 7 from Frith's series, Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views (William MacKenzie, London, circa 1860), mammoth-plate albumen print, signed and dated '1858' by the photographer in the negative, on the original oblong folio mount, the plate title, date of 1857, and photographer's credit in letterpress on the mount, 1857-58; accompanied by the original leaf of letterpress text by Reginald Stuart Poole and Sophia Poole

15 3/8 by 19 1/4 in. (39 by 48.8 cm.)

Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 51,400 USD

Dating from Frith's second trip to Egypt, the mammoth-plate albumen print offered here is one of a suite of photographs from Frith's Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views. Taken at Saqqara, part of an ancient necropolis, this photograph shows the oldest of Egypt's pyramids, the 3rd Dynasty Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser and, in the foreground, an unfinished pyramid begun by Djoser. The random skulls in the foreground bear testament to the site's history as a final resting place for ancient Egyptian Pharaohs.

Published by William Mackenzie in 1860, the bound volume of Frith's Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views, was advertised in its day as 'the largest book with the biggest, unenlarged prints ever published' (quoted in Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine: A Victorian Photographer Abroad, p. 79). The monumental scale of Frith's folio, from which the present print and letterpress text were taken, made it unique for its time and almost unparalleled in the history of photography. A departure from his earlier multi-volume publication on the Middle East, Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem marked the first time Frith included text by experts in the field. Each photo was issued with a letterpress description by the mother-and-son team of Sophia Poole and Reginald Stuart Poole. Both had lived in Cairo and were familiar with Egyptian history and culture; the latter was employed at the British Museum in the Antiquities Department and trained with one of the leading Egyptologists of the day.

A man of means by his early thirties, Frith made his initial trip to Egypt in 1856 as a gentleman amateur. While he was not the first to photograph there, he was the first to bring mammoth-plate collodion photography to the region. To use his mammoth-plate camera on site, Frith had a specially-constructed covered carriage that housed the camera and plates. The carriage also served as a makeshift darkroom, and its tracks are visible in the photograph included here. The use of collodion on glass posed tremendous problems in the dust and heat of the desert. The emulsion had to be applied to the glass plates in an ether-filled tent, at temperatures reaching 114˚. Frith described the experience in his Egypt and Palestine as follows: 'Now in a smothering little tent, with my collodion fizzing—boiling up all over the glass the instant that it touched—and, again, pushing my hand backwards, upon my hands and knees, into a damp, slimy rock-tomb to manipulate—it is truly marvelous that the results should be presentab

Lawrence Alma-Tadema - The Balneator



Price Realized £67,250

signed and numbered 'L Alma Tadema. op CLXXVI' (lower right)
pencil and watercolour with scratching out on paper
14 7/8 x 10 7/8 in. (37.8 x 27.6 cm.)

Alma-Tadema painted several pictures treating the subject of the Roman Baths from 1875 onwards, possibly due to his acquisition of a large portfolio of photographs of Pompeii and the exhibits in the Museum at Naples around this time. The servant carries the tools of his trade, a sponge and strigils to scrape the oil from the skin.

Frank Holl - The Wide, Wide World




Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 53,775 GBP

signed and dated l.r.: FRANK HOLL 1873
oil on canvas
76.5 by 64cm.; 30 by 25¼.

The present painting of a young woman dressed in black and seated on a bench on a railway station platform is a re-working of a single figure from Frank Holl's 1873 Royal Academy subject Leaving Home (fig.1). The exhibited painting shows the girl at the right side of the composition, as she quietly counts the money in her purse. Beside her on the bench is a soldier - presumably on his way to join his regiment, and anxiously attended by a wife - and an old man. Standing at the left of the complete composition is a ticket collector, and beyond further travellers are seen as they crowd on to the platform. The Royal Academy exhibit Leaving Home was bought by Holl's brother-in-law Henry Hill, whose distinguished collection combined works by British and French social realists.

Six years after appearing at the Royal Academy, the oil version in its complete form was reproduced as a line engraving in the Art Journal, and was described in some detail in an accompanying article: `There are few places of public resort presenting more numerous and greater variety of materials for the study of incident and character than a great railway station: it is at certain times of the day a vast field of observation wherein one sees much that is manifest to all, while imagination suggests to the mind even more, which may take any form of good or ill that thought may prompt or indicate. Mr Frith, in his large, and now well-known, picture [The Railway Station (Royal Holloway College Collection, Egham)], has made good use of the materials supplied by the bustle and excitement of such a scene; and Mr Holl, acting under more circumscribed limits, has availed himself of a similar opportunity, only he has been contented with what appears to be the representation of the temporary occupants of a platform of some country railway station, instead of following Mr Frith's example, and showing the vast area of one of our principal metropolitan terminuses.' Of the woman who forms the subject of the present version of the painting, and who the Art Journal described as `a young and ladylike female, whose dress indicates, in some degree, her lonely condition', her actions were watched with interest: `She has opened her purse, evidently not too plentifully furnished, and is counting out the money it contains after paying the cost of her ticket to her place of destination' (Art Journal, 1879, p.16).

The subject of Holl's Leaving Home originated as a wood engraving illustration for the Graphic, which periodical in the 1870s gave particular encouragement to the realistic representation of scenes of social distress. It was apparently originally intended to be called Third Class, a title suggested by the lettering on the plate glass of the window, but seems to have been entitled At a Railway Station - A Study, when it appeared in the magazine on 10 February 1872. The circumstances of Holl's making this engraving, and its submission to the editor of the Graphic, Mr Thomas, are described by the artist's daughter A.M. Reynolds in The Life and Work of Frank Holl (1912, p.97). Holl's graphic work was much admired by Vincent Van Gogh, as he explained in a letter to his brother Theo: `I have enough decoration for my studio - I bought very cheaply some beautiful wood-engravings from the Graphic, in part prints not from the cliché but from the blocks themselves. Just what I had been wanting for years, drawings by Herkomer, Frank Holl, Walker, and others' (letter dated 7 January 1882), or: `For me the English black-and-white artists are to art what Dickens is to literature. They have exactly the same sentiment, noble and healthy, and one always returns to them' (letter to Rappard, mid-September 1882). The Graphic subject At a Railway Station - A Study was referred to twice in Van Gogh's letters.



The present painting of a young woman dressed in black and seated on a bench on a railway station platform is a re-working of a single figure from Frank Holl's 1873 Royal Academy subject Leaving Home. The exhibited painting shows the girl at the right side of the composition, as she quietly counts the money in her purse. Beside her on the bench is a soldier - presumably on his way to join his regiment, and anxiously attended by a wife - and an old man. Standing at the left of the complete composition is a ticket collector, and beyond further travellers are seen as they crowd on to the platform. The Royal Academy exhibit Leaving Home was bought by Holl's brother-in-law Henry Hill, whose distinguished collection combined works by British and French social realists.

Six years after appearing at the Royal Academy, the oil version in its complete form was reproduced as a line engraving in the Art Journal, and was described in some detail in an accompanying article: `There are few places of public resort presenting more numerous and greater variety of materials for the study of incident and character than a great railway station: it is at certain times of the day a vast field of observation wherein one sees much that is manifest to all, while imagination suggests to the mind even more, which may take any form of good or ill that thought may prompt or indicate. Mr Frith, in his large, and now well-known, picture [The Railway Station (Royal Holloway College Collection, Egham)], has made good use of the materials supplied by the bustle and excitement of such a scene; and Mr Holl, acting under more circumscribed limits, has availed himself of a similar opportunity, only he has been contented with what appears to be the representation of the temporary occupants of a platform of some country railway station, instead of following Mr Frith's example, and showing the vast area of one of our principal metropolitan terminuses.' Of the woman who forms the subject of the present version of the painting, and who the Art Journal described as `a young and ladylike female, whose dress indicates, in some degree, her lonely condition', her actions were watched with interest: `She has opened her purse, evidently not too plentifully furnished, and is counting out the money it contains after paying the cost of her ticket to her place of destination' (Art Journal, 1879, p.16).

The subject of Holl's Leaving Home originated as a wood engraving illustration for the Graphic, which periodical in the 1870s gave particular encouragement to the realistic representation of scenes of social distress. It was apparently originally intended to be called Third Class, a title suggested by the lettering on the plate glass of the window, but seems to have been entitled At a Railway Station - A Study, when it appeared in the magazine on 10 February 1872. The circumstances of Holl's making this engraving, and its submission to the editor of the Graphic, Mr Thomas, are described by the artist's daughter A.M. Reynolds in The Life and Work of Frank Holl (1912, p.97). Holl's graphic work was much admired by Vincent Van Gogh, as he explained in a letter to his brother Theo: `I have enough decoration for my studio - I bought very cheaply some beautiful wood-engravings from the Graphic, in part prints not from the cliché but from the blocks themselves. Just what I had been wanting for years, drawings by Herkomer, Frank Holl, Walker, and others' (letter dated 7 January 1882), or: `For me the English black-and-white artists are to art what Dickens is to literature. They have exactly the same sentiment, noble and healthy, and one always returns to them' (letter to Rappard, mid-September 1882). The Graphic subject At a Railway Station - A Study was referred to twice in Van Gogh's letters.

Van Gogh's comparison of such images to the novels of Dickens is particularly interesting in relation to the present painting, because in both the exhibited version and the present related composition Holl has included a billboard advertising an illustrated edition of Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. A.M. Reynolds wrote of her father's admiration for Dickens, explaining that although he never made literal illustrations of themes from the novels, nonetheless, `as one stands before certain of my father's earlier pictures ... one seems to be looking backward at a dead tradition, the very life of the middle classes of the Victorian era' (The Life of Frank Holl, London, 1912, p.315). Some connection was perhaps intended between the sombre figure of the young woman in Holl's painting - whose clothes indicate that she has suffered the loss of a parent, and whose position is one of financial insecurity and personal loneliness, and Dickens' heroine Kate Nickleby - the gentle sister of Nicholas, who on the death of their father is left penniless and who therefore seeks work as a dress-maker and is at the same time exposed to the evil machinations of her uncle Ralph Nickleby.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema - An Oleander



signed and inscribed 'L Alma Tadema op.CCXLV' (upper right)
oil on panel
36 x 25¾ in. (91.4 x 65.4 cm.)

Commissioned by Messrs. L. H. Lefevre, London, 1882.

F. Spalding, Magnificent Dreams: Burne-Jones and the late Victorians, 1978, p. 65.
V. G. Swanson, The Unknown Alma-Tadema: A Study in Connoisseurship, exhibition catalogue, Brigham Young University, 1979, no. 27.
V. G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, pp. 218-19, no. 281, p. 414.
R.J. Barrow, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 2001, p. 92, no. 85.

London, Royal Academy, 1883, no. 343.

An Oleander represents Alma-Tadema at the height of his career and according to J.E. Hodgson, An Oleander was 'Nature and invention dovetailed'. Swanson writes that the artist was 'fond of glimpses into distant views and during this period the contrast of warm foregrounds against the cool blues of the ocean in his backgrounds offer beautiful juxtapositions. An Oleander is probably the best example of Alma-Tadema's playing with foreground and background contrasts of light, detail and color' (V.G.Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, p. 219).

In 1878 Alma-Tadema and his wife Laura spent three months travelling on the continent and he wrote with enthusiasm of the Romantic appeal of Italy: 'Oranges and lemons, olives and springflowers, brown sunkissed mankind young and old, graceful and strong, sometimes very beautiful. Fine art and antiquity.' (Letter to F.G. Stevens, 18 April 1878, F.G. Stevens Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford). His paintings of the time reflect an interest in the city of Rome, Pompeii and other Italian subjects. 1878 also saw the election of Frederic Leighton as President of the Royal Academy, following the death of Sir Francis Grant. This change of regime ensured that classicism, now firmly allied with traditional modes of representation, flourished along with the Academy. The following year Alma-Tadema was elected a full Academician. He was one of a number of young artists working in Britain who brought new approaches to the representation of the classical work, but it is his unique type of historical genre painting which is the defining force of the new classical-subject movement of the time.

1882 was the year the Alma-Tadema presented his Diploma picture (a work presented to the Academy by all newly elected members) entitled The Way to the Temple. This bears many similarities to the present work. It depicts a woman seated at the entrance of a temple selling votive statuettes. The viewer's eye is drawn to the background where we are given an intriguing glimpse of a Bacchic procession and the sea far beyond. However, contemporary critics strongly favored An Oleander as a composition, for its sumptuous interior showing a woman next to an oleander plant, also exhibited at the 1883 Academy exhibition. While The Way to the Temple demonstrates the same clever perspective and interesting look at ancient social life as An Oleander, it lacks the stunning color scheme displayed by the present lot. An Oleander features a woman in a seductive robe with revealing sleeves who sits on the edge of a marble bath which is filled with exotic shells; as she appears to day-dream as she enjoys the heavy scent of an oleander flower. The rich red walls behind her add to the intoxicating atmosphere and emphasize the romantic narrative of the painting. In the far distance, it appears that a party is leaving by boat, stressing the sense of longing and separation.

The oleander tree is native to the Mediterranean. It has several legends attached to it and in Greek mythology it symbolized romance and charm. The Biblical Rose of Jericho is also thought to refer to the oleander and medicinal use of the oleander plant dates back at least 3500 years.

George Smith - pair



Price Realized £16,730

The Rightful Heir; and The Coming of Age
the former inscribed 'The Rightful Heir' (on the reverse) and the latter signed and dated 'G Smith 1875' (lower right)
oil on panel
the former 10¼ x 16 in. (26 x 40.6 cm.); the latter 10 1/8 x 16 in. (25.6 x 40.6 cm.) (2)

of Everyday Life

Lionel Lambourne

George Eliot loved Dutch paintings. In Adam Bede (1859) she describes why she found 'a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous, homely existence...I turn...to an old woman bending over her pot, or eating her solitary dinner while the noonday light...just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug. Do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish...those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands...let Art always remind us of them...'

These words remind us that our delight in tales or paintings of everyday life lies deep in human nature. Today, radio and television 'soap operas' and 'situation comedies' present 'everyday stories of country folk' or 'tales of the city' and suburb. There is nothing new about this, for since Egyptian times artists have painted pictures showing universally understood relationships, such as an idle servant and a stern master or young lovers being disturbed by intruders. The ever-enthralling battle of the sexes was a main preoccupation both of Victorian genre painters and novelists such as Thackeray and Dickens. Novels often appeared in illustrated serial form, thus helping to create a climate ideal for genre painters, enjoined since the time of Hogarth and Henry Fielding, to make their paintings 'novels in paint.'

Paintings which 'told a story' via the medium of engravings found their way into many thousands of homes, just as today videos of such films as Four Weddings and a Funeral reach an audience of millions. Several paintings from this part of the Forbes Collection create interesting parallels between the Victorian age and today. We can see, for example, how the difficulties of getting your partner to the altar have changed, from the exciting exchange of vows recorded in Rebecca Solomon's A Love Letter to the arrival of the wedding dress and elaborate trousseau, laid out for the envy and admiration of family and friends, shown in Jessica Hayllar's A Coming Event. Such prodigies of embroidery sadly recall the darker side of the dressmaking industry notorious for sweated labour, activities denounced by Thomas Hood in The Song of the Shirt published in Punch in 1843:

Oh! men with sisters dear,
Oh! men with mothers and wives,
It is not linen you're wearing out
But human creatures' lives.

The poem inspired Richard Redgrave's The Sempstress exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844.

The time on the clock shows half-past-two in the morning, yet the sempstress, emaciated, hopeless and worn-out, with red-rimmed eyes, is still plying her needle to finish an order. The artist Paul Falconer Poole wrote an encouraging letter to Redgrave concerning The Sempstress: 'Who can help exclaiming "Poor soul! God help her?" If any circumstance could make us...go down shirtless to our graves, it is the contemplation of this truthful and wonderful picture.'

The Pre-Raphaelite artist James Collinson excelled at genre scenes. He had a love affair with Christina Rossetti which went sadly wrong, and she broke off the engagement owing to religious differences. In 1854 he resumed painting genre subjects, notably two oval paintings For Sale (lot 98) and To Let (lot 97), both exhibited in 1857 bearing their enigmatic titles. Collinson painted several different versions of these paintings right up to his death in 1881. Each features an attractive woman, the younger with an empty purse at a church bazaar, the older a plump beauty placing a 'To Let' sign in a window above flower-pots containing a lily and a 'Bleeding Heart'. Victorian eyes alert to the 'language of flowers' would surely have noted the lady's dark costume and wedding ring, and interpreted the subject as a variation on the theme of the amorous widow, made famous by Mr Pickwick's landlady Mrs Bardell, who sued him for breach of promise of marriage.

In William Powell Frith's sketch for his painting of a wedding ambiguously entitled 'For Better, For Worse' (lot 335), a shower of old slippers are thrown at the happy couple to bring them luck. In the final version (lot 10) the slippers are less conspicuous, but much more in evidence are the family of beggars contrasted with the affluent newly-weds, and the meaningful glance exchanged by the bridegroom with a young woman on the balcony of a house from which the wedding party is debouching across the pavement. The bridegroom lifts his hat while the girl indicates with the fan she holds that she is still interested in him.

Inside the church things could also go wrong, as Edward Blair Leighton's 'Till Death do Us part' demonstrates. The title, like Frith's, is taken from the marriage service, but is given a sardonic interpretation by the painter. The bride is shown on the arm of the elderly bridegroom whom she has just married. She exchanges rueful glances with a young man in one of the pews. She has become the 'bird in a gilded cage' whose 'beauty is sold for an old man's gold' in a popular song of the period.

Music played an important role at weddings, and for early Victorians it was often supplied by an amateur band and choir who played in the galleries of churches. Such a group inspired Thomas Webster's most famous painting The Village Choir (lot 45). For it he made individual drawings of all the members of the band of Bow Brickhill Church, including the blacksmith, 'Old Tooth', playing the clarinet. The painting looks back to the Dutch school and Sir David Wilkie, but also anticipates Thomas Hardy's novel Under The Greenwood Tree (1872). This deals with rivalry between musicians with old-fashioned instruments and those converting to the new-fangled church organs and harmoniums.

Life after marriage could also present difficult dilemmas, one being whether to emigrate. Between 1840 and 1860 over four million emigrated from a population of 26 million - one in six people, a truly staggering statistic. Family farewells proved irresistible to artists such as Paul Falconer Poole, whose Emigrant's Departure is one of the earliest portrayals of this poignant subject.

Funerals were a frequent subject for Frank Holl, who in 1871 began to work for The Graphic, an illustrated magazine with a great social conscience. Some of Holl's work for this journal was later reworked for Royal Academy paintings. The subject of maternal grief and infant death was the theme of Doubtful Hope, in which a chemist concocts medicine for a dying child held by its young mother. The woman clutches a coin, her last resource.

Only slightly less harrowing than the death of a child was the departure of an infant to a home such as the Foundling Hospital. This was almost the only institution to support illegitimate children, over 42,000 of which were born in England and Wales in 1851 alone. While housed at the Foundling Hospital, girls were tutored in domestic skills to fit them for work as maids, and boys apprenticed to a trade or encouraged to join the army. George Adolphus Storey's painting Orphans (lot 271) has a distinctly Dutch mood, reminiscent of the work of Pieter de Hooch in its view of a garden seen through open doors. Storey, like William Frederick Yeames, belonged to the St John's Wood Clique, a group of artists who shared a preference for British Civil War subjects, playing engaging variations on the theme of Cavalier boys, Puritan girls and King Charles spaniels. Yeames's most famous painting, 'And when did You last see your Father?' , was inspired by his outspoken nephew who posed for the principal figure. After the work's first exhibition in 1878 it steadily became famous, its title making it a useful analogy for cartoonists. It finally achieved the ultimate accolade of being turned into a waxwork tableau at Madame Tussauds.

When it comes to producing skeletons from cupboards, the Victorians win hands down. People sometimes came back from emigration, which may explain George Smith's The Rightful Heir, showing a little boy and his mother, both in deep mourning, confronting a villainous usurper. Similar themes were used again and again, not only by painters but by writers ranging from Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to Florence Hodgson Burnett, the author of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886).

Some of the most popular genre subjects were the pleasures and pains of childhood. William Mulready's painting Train up a Child the Way He should go (lot 5) shows a child being taught how to give charity to beggars, a difficult problem, then as now. Mulready was also interested in children's games and boxing as a pastime for boys. Both John Faed's Boyhood (lot 7) and John Morgan's The Fight (lot 16) depict a scene familiar in many school playgrounds when a teacher breaks up a fight just when it gets exciting.

Paired subjects often provided a useful narrative device. John Watson Nicol's Cause and Effect (lot 246) depicts a small boy devouring green, unripe apples and experiencing a resultant tummy-ache. But the 'before' and 'after' formula was also used by Victorian genre painters for very different subjects, for example the famous Waiting for the Verdict and Acquitted by Abraham Solomon (Tate Gallery). What actually goes on behind the closed door of the juryroom always intrigues the public. George Bernard O'Neill's painting The Jury forms part of a continuing process which can be seen almost exactly a century later with the film Twelve Angry Men (1957), starring Henry Fonda as the obstinate juror. One of the crimes which might lead to the dock is shown in A Vestry Meeting - Something Wrong with the Accounts by John Ritchie.

Itinerant showmen provided good subjects for 'modern-life' painters, and The Peepshow by John Burr shows a form of street entertainment which appealed to that most deep-seated human instinct, curiosity, the urge to peer through a hole. The attraction advertised, The Babes in the Wood, is directed at a child audience, but that adults also enjoyed scenes of horrific fantasy was vividly expressed by a showman to Henry Mayhew in one of his interviews: 'People is werry fond of the battles in the country, but a murder wot is well known is worth more than all the fights...'. Such a conclusion is still valid when we glance at the tabloid press on any Sunday morning. The sub-title of The News of the World was for many years 'All Human Life is Here'. Perhaps the title is better applied to Victorian genre painting.

The Rightful Heir is the modello for the painting exhibited at the Royal Academy, in 1874, no. 675. The R.A. picture, considered Smith's masterpiece, was formerly the property of the novelist Evelyn Waugh, who formed a distinguished collection of genre pictures in the middle years of the last century. It was sold at Christie's London, 2 February 1979, lot 184.

The composition was no doubt prompted by the sensational coverage of the trial of 'the Tichborne claimant' to a baronetcy, one of several such cases to pass through the courts in the 1870s. Anthony Trollope also treated the theme in his novels Ralph the Heir of 1871 and Is he Popenjoy ?, of 1874-5, though serialized a few years later. The Athenaeum, reviewing the R.A. picture, described the young widow arriving with her son to claim 'from a wicked, cruel, but courteous usurper the estate which is in debate between them'. The usurper, 'horribly handsome, in a gorgeous dressing-gown of Chinese embroidery, the outlandishness of which, added to his well-waxed black moustache and oiled hair, to say nothing of a furtive, rascally look in his dark eyes, and his naughty habit of smoking in the morning, make all good people consider him diabolical'. His companions who 'drink champagne and smoke before lunch - all three being good looking men, but sadly wicked, of course' ... are contrasted with the child, who resembles Little Lord Fauntleroy, dressed 'quite like his noble ancestor, whose picture by Van Dyck hangs on the wall ...'.

The relation to the picture's Hogarthian pendant, currently known as 'The Coming of Age' but bearing some resemblance to Smith's R.A. exhibit of 1876, entitled Into the Cold World, is not entirely clear. Is the viewer to be reminded of the dangers of flirtation (to the left), drink (carried by the maid in the doorway) and the temptation to sell heirlooms to finance high living (the group of connoisseurs to the right)? The meaning of the picture is ambiguous and less clear than in comparable moralizing works such as Robert Martineau's Last Day in the Old Home of 1861 and Frith's series The Road to Ruin of 1878.

The subjects are more urbane than is usual in Smith's work. A pupil of Charles West Cope, and the Royal Academy schools, he more often painted rustic scenes of children in the manner of Thomas Webser, F.D. Hardy, and other members of the Cranbrook Colony. His early paintings, and those of William Mulready, hung in the collection of John Sheepshanks and can now be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

London "Urchins"

Edwin Long - An Ancient Custom



Price Realized £111,150

signed and dated 'E. Long. ARA. 1877' (lower right)
oil on canvas
28½ x 38 in. (72.5 x 96.5 cm.)

An Ancient Custom was painted at the height of Long's career. The previous year The Babylonian Marriage Market (fig. 3) had been exhibited at the Royal Academy to rapturous reviews. Reputedly commissioned by the MP Edward Hermon for the substantial sum of £1,700, it took its subject from George C. Swayne's The History of Herodotus:

Herodotus records one of their customs, which, whether in jest or earnest, he declares to be the wisest he ever heard of. This was their wife-auction, by which they managed to find husbands for all their young women. The greatest beauty was put up first, and knocked down to the highest bidder; then the next in order of comeliness - and so on to the damsel who was equidistant between beauty and plainness, who was given away gratis. Then the least plain was put up, and knocked down to the gallant who would marry her for the smallest consideration - and so on till even the plainest was got rid of to some cynical worthy, who decidedly preferred lucre to looks. By transferring to the scale of the ill favoured the prices paid for the fair, beauty was made to endow ugliness, and the rich man's taste was the poor man's gain.

In order to ensure the authenticity of his depiction, Long made an extensive tour of Egypt and Syria in 1874-5, which he supplemented by a study of the exhibits in the British Museum. His aim was to facilitate a harmonious connection between art and archeology, and according to Ruskin's review of the work, by the standards of the day he succeeded. Ruskin thought it: 'A painting of great merit, and well deserving purchase by the Anthropological Society. For the varieties of character in the heads are rendered with extreme subtlety: while, as a mere piece of painting, the work is remarkable, in the modern school, for its absence of affectation: there is no insolently indulged indolence nor vulgarly asserted dexterity - the painting is good throughout and unobtrusively powerful'. The Art Journal endorsed Ruskin's praise: 'The picture, in our eyes, is historic in the best sense, and does honour to the British School'.

In 1882 The Babylonian Marriage Market achieved further notoriety when it was sold at Christie's for £6,6235, an auction record for a work by a living artist and a feat which remained unsurpassed for the next decade. It was bought by the distinguished collector Thomas Holloway, and is now in the collection of the Royal Holloway College, Egham, Surrey.

Such was the success of this picture that it not surprisingly encouraged Long to produce more paintings in the same vein. The prime version of An Ancient Custom was painted in 1876 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877. Again, on account of its success, Long painted a second slightly smaller version, the present lot, later that year. Long must have been pleased with the composition, for, as he told the Times on 7 June 1879, that 'with the exception of one other picture entitled "An Ancient Custom"...I have not made any duplicates of my pictures, or any portions of them, for some years past.' The prime version was sold at Christie's New York, 1 May 2000, lot 45, for $776,000, the current world auction record for the artist.

Reviews of An Ancient Custom were eclipsed by those for another vast work, An Egyptian Feast, measuring 74½ x 150 in., which Long exhibited at the Academy in the same year. Of that picture the Art Journal wrote: 'Here is the great outcome of a teeming imagination, constrained and guided by a ripe scholarship, a trained judgement, and projected on the canvas with a hand of the rarest cunning...The merits of Mr Long's work lie in his archeological knowledge, as already hinted; also in the wonderful variety of expressive action and detail, which, however, he keeps wisely subservient to the general effect, and thus maintains breadth and unity. Moreover, caeteris paribus, the warmth and wealth of his colouring give Mr. Long an advantage over every other workman in a similar field, whether that field be Classical or Oriental.'

The present painting depicts a Nubian girl on her knees painting the eyebrows of her mistress. A tapestry and a Babylonian relief stands behind them, while the costume, jewellery and perfume bottles that stand in the foreground and background are painted with accuracy. According to Long, the painting was 'the original study' for Esther on a smaller scale, and afterwards completed for the purpose of engraving'. Two of Long's paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1879 were subjects from the book of Esther. Queen Esther (fig. 2) is now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, while Vashti is in the Bob Jones University and Gallery, Greenville, USA.

Long's career falls into two distinct halves. Between 1857 and 1873 he travelled annually to Spain, encouraged by the example of John 'Spanish' Phillip (1817-1867), and produced pictures such as The Suppliants: Expulsion of the Gypsies from Spain of 1872, now in the Royal Holloway College. However from 1874 he turned to the oriental, classical and biblical scenes that secured his fortune, and enabled him to build tow magnificent studio house, designed by the Arts and Crafts architect Richard Norman Shaw. The largest concentration of these later works can now be seen in the Russell Cotes Museum and Art Gallery, Bournemouth.

We are grateful to Mark Bills, for his help in preparing this entry.

Edwin Long - Gibraltar; from the series 'Daughters of Our Empire'



High on the Rock that fronts the sea
Stands alone our fortress key
Lady of the Southern main

Price Realized £16,730

signed with monogram and dated 1886 (lower right) and with inscription '"Gibraltar" by E. Long R.A. One of the series of "Beauty" pictures Copyright registersed by Thos. Agnew & Sons' (on an old label on the reverse)
oil on canvas
32 1/8 x 41 1/8 in. (81.5 x 104.4 cm.)

London, Agnew's, 1887, no. 15.

This picture was one of a series of twenty commissioned by the London dealers Agnew's to celebrate the Royal Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Various 'Daughters of Empire' were depicted in their national costumes. These included Aden; Bethlehem; India; Wales; Australia; Canada; Cyprus (Ancient: Love's Messenger, and Modern); Egypt; England: the Parson's Daughter, The Violet, The Rose (a portrait of Princess May of Teck, later Queen Mary, wife of King George V), The Primrose, The Little Sister of the Poor; Ireland; Jamaica; Malta; Scotland and Trinidad.

Edwin Long - The Approval



Price Realized £10,925

signed 'Edwin LONG/1873' (lower left)
oil on canvas
48 x 66.3/8 in. (122 x 168.5 cm.)

Long began painting Spanish subjects in 1857 and they continued to be a major focus of his work until the early 1870s. The present example resembles two other religious scenes from this period, An Easter Vigil in a Cathedral at Seville (1871) and Good Advice (1871). The three central figures of these two works are repeated in our picture: the priest, the old woman to his left, and the young woman illuminated to his right. The theme of the elderly advising the young is also continued here, and the letter in Good Advice now appears in the hands of the old woman.

Long first experimented with classical painting in 1873, and historical details in his works become more apparent from this date. The arches in this painting resemble those in one of his most important historical scenes, The Suppliants: Expulsion of the Gypsies from Spain (1872). Likewise, the details on the front and back walls in the present work relate to his first real classical picture, A Dorcas Meeting in the 6th Century (1873-77).

We are grateful to Mark Bills of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth for his help in the preparation of this catalogue entry.

Edwin Long - The Easter Vigil



Price Realized £41,825

signed 'EDWIN LONG' (lower right) and signed and inscribed 'The Easter Vigil/Painted by Edwin Long/33 Ovington Square' (on an old label on the reverse)
oil on canvas
51¾ x 81 in. (131.4 x 205.7 cm.)

M. Bills, Edward Longsden Long, London, 1998, no. 102, pp. 6, 91, illus, p. 90 and illus. in colour p. 133.

London, Royal Academy, 1871, no. 486.

A woman whispers her confession to a priest who listens with wrinkled brow and a wry expression whilst another girl kisses the feet of a statue of Jesus and a group of women await their turn, praying and clutching their rosary beads. This is a superb example of Long's work from his Spanish period and bears many similarities to The Catechism (1867). However, it is closest in theme and composition to Good Advice (1871) in which Long portrays the same central characters in a similarly religious genre scene. The young girl, her anxious mother urging her on, presents a letter to the priest and listens to his advice, coyly turning her head away. Mark Bills has suggested that Good Advice, although smaller (38 x 51¾ in.) forms the second part of the narrative begun in our work. A study exists painted the same year that does not show the confession box and the clergyman to the left of the picture and which were conceived of later for the main work. (Madame Tussauds; by descent to Mr Clive Blount).

Long's Spanish interest stems back to 1857 when he attended classes given by John Phillip in his studio at 39 Gloucester Road. Phillip introduced Long to the Spanish painters that had influenced him and they travelled extensively throughout Spain together. This period from 1857 until 1874 when he went to Egypt was Long's most prolific period during which the influence of Phillip and Murillo are present throughout his work. The individual character of Long's work began to form and can be seen most obviously in his works on a larger scale. Although his grander history subjects were clearly influenced by Phillip, it was his fascination with religious ritual and devotion which distinguished Long from his mentor. The characteristic elements of his genre pieces from his Spanish period include priests, lovers, fruit-sellers - all revealing a diversity of colourful Spanish costume. Religious devotion of young women was a frequent subject in his work in such paintings as At Mass (c. 1860) and A Young Peasant at her Devotions (1870). Perhaps his first wholly successful painting on an ambitious scale is A Question of Propriety was exhibited in 1870 the year before our work and received favourable reviews in the journals. In 1871 Long visited Spain and whilst painting An Easter Vigil, he also undertook The Supplicants: Expulsion of the Gypsies from Spain which achieved critical acclaim the following year at the Royal Academy and effectively severed his stylistic ties with Phillip.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Victorian Chronometer



A VICTORIAN ROSEWOOD AND BRASS-BOUND TWO DAY MARINE CHRONOMETER
CHARLES FRODSHAM, LONDON, NO. 2680. CIRCA 1865
Three tier box (lid lacking) with ivory roundel signed 'CHAS. FRODSHAM/84 Strand/LONDON/NO 2680', brass bowl and gimbal, 100 mm. diameter silvered dial with subsidiary state of wind and seconds rings, repeat signature, movement with single chain fusee with maintaining power, spring detent escapement, cut bimetallic balance with circular temperature compensation weights, blued steel helical spring, top plate signed 'Charles Frodsham London'; tipsy winding key
The box -- 6½ in. (16.5 cm.) high

Price Realized £1,625

Kate Greenaway - Almanacks



Almanack for 1883 [-1895]. London: George Routledge, [1882-1894]. -- Almanack & Diary for 1897. London: J.M. Dent, [1896].

15 volumes (includes two copies of 1895), 24o and 12o. Illustrated by Greenaway. Various original and variant bindings of glazed pictorial boards or imitation leather, 1884 volume in original wrappers, some edges gilt (overall some very light wear); maroon quarter morocco slipcase. Provenance: Mrs. Frederick Locker Lampson (presentation inscriptions).

FIRST EDITIONS, Almanack for 1885 and 1894 PRESENTATION COPIES, inscribed to Mrs. Locker Lampson on the half-title pages. The variant bindings consist of imitation cream morocco for 1885, 1886, 1891, 1892, 1894, and the second 1895 copy, green cloth gilt for 1888 and 1890, and brown cloth gilt for 1889. Schuster and Engen, 3-16. [With:] Autograph letter signed from Kate Greenaway to Mrs. Locker Lampson, Hampstead, 22 December 1893. 3 pages, 8vo, with autograph envelope. An affectionate letter to Mrs. Locker that most likely accompanied the Almanack for 1894.

[With:] GREENAWAY. Almanack for 1925 [-1927]. London: Frederick Warne & Co., [1924-1926]. -- Almanack & Diary for 1929. London and New York: Frederick Warne & Co., [1928]. 4 volumes, 24o. Illustrated by Greenaway. Original bindings; all with original glassine dust wrappers (a few chips). Reissued with new text and with illustrations from the Almanacks from 1887, 1890, 1891, and 1879. Schuster and Engen, 18-20, 22. (20)

Julia Margaret Cameron - Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Other Poems, Illustrated by Julia Margaret Cameron, London: Henry S. King & Co., 187



Price Realized £23,500


Gernsheim, Incunabula of British Photographic Literature 1839-1875, p.73, no. 585

Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Portrait of Mrs Charles Wyllie



Price Realized £40,000

signed and inscribed 'L.Alma-Tadema/op CCCXX' (upper left)
oil on panel
11.7/8 x 7 in. (30 x 18 cm.)

R. Dircks, 'The Later Works of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A., R.W.S.', Art Journal Christmas Supplement, December 1910, p. 31.
Vern G. Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1977, p. 140.
Vern G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonn of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, p. 248, no. 357, the engraving illustrated p. 452.
London, New Gallery, 1893, no. 16.
Munich, 1894.
Birmingham, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, 31st Spring Exhibition, 1896, no. 341.
London, Earl's Court, 1897, no. 97.
London, Shepherd's Bush, Coronation Exhibition, 1911, Fine Art Section, no. 1814.

The sitter was the wife of the artist Charles William Wyllie (1853-1923). Like his better-known elder brother, William Lionel Wyllie (1851-1931), Charles specialised in marine and coastal subjects, although he was not quite so devoted to them as his sibling, varying them with classical and vaguely symbolist themes. He was never, like William, a Royal Academician, but he showed regularly at the Academy from 1872, as well as at Suffolk Street, the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery, and elsewhere. One of his pictures, Digging for Bait (Tate Gallery), was bought for the Chantrey Bequest when he was only twenty-four. His brother did not receive such an honour until he was thirty-two.

Charlotte Wyllie, too, was an artist. Born Charlotte Major, she did not support the Royal Academy, but she showed regularly at the Grosvenor Gallery from 1878, its second year, to 1886. She also exhibited occasionally at Manchester and Liverpool, and she sent one picture, The Sin Offering, to the opening exhibition at the New Gallery, the Grosvenor's successor, in 1888. After this, although her husband continued to be represented, her name disappears from the Gallery's catalogues, and it is possible that she gave up painting. The titles of her pictures alone tell us that she attempted portraits, genre scenes and symbolist subjects, and this is borne out by the two examples which are all one finds in her Witt Library file. One is a mysterious half-length figure, crowned and veiled, the other a likeness of a little girl with a dog.

The fact that the child is dressed in the Dutch style is probably significant. The influence of Dutch seventeenth-century painting was strong both on Alma-Tadema himself and, more overtly, on his wife Laura, whose paintings freely acknowledge this source in style and iconography. Mrs Wyllie's modest little picture almost certainly echoes this tendency, for it is clear that the Wyllies and the Alma-Tademas were on close terms. In the 1880s and the 1890s the Wyllies are recorded either living or working at three addresses in St John's Wood - 11 Melina Place, 8 Melina Road, and 38 Abercorn Place - all of which were close to the Alma-Tademas at 17 Grove End Road. Charles Wyllie, moreover, was one of the forty-five artists who contributed panels to the decoration of the entrance hall at their friends' abode (fig. 1). The house had once been occupied by J.J.J. Tissot, but in 1884, two years after the grief-stricken artist had returned to Paris following the death of his mistress, Mrs Newton, it was taken over by Alma-Tadema and turned into the most spectacular studio house of the day. Visitors were stunned by the lavish decor and the eclectic mixture of decorative syles, ranging from Pompeian to a seventeenth-century Dutch mode which reflected Alma-Tadema's national origins and the artistic allegiance of both husband and wife. The panels in the entrance hall, each 31 inches in height and representing the characteristic styles of their creators, were one of the most notable features, figuring prominently in accounts of the astonishing show-place. The panels were removed when the house was sold up in June 1913, a year after Alma-Tadema's death, but Wyllie's re-appeared at Sotheby's Belgravia on 5 November 1974, lot 54.

Alma-Tadema's portrait of Charlotte Wyllie, which we know was given to her husband by the artist, was almost certainly traded for Wyllie's contribution to the Hall of Panels. This is true of a number of Alma-Tadema's more modest works from the late 1880s. Leighton, for instance, contributed a version of his famous Bath of Psyche (1890; Tate Gallery), and received in return Alma-Tadema's painting In the Corner of my Studio (1893; Swanson, no. 356). But most of the pictures offered as a quid pro quo took the form of portraits. As Professor Swanson observes in his catalogue raisonn, Alma-Tadema rather specialised in painting the womenfolk of distinguished fellow artists. In addition to his own wife, Laura, who sat to him on several occasions, his sitters included the wives or daughters of the painters John MacWhirter, Henry Stacy Marks, Marcus Stone, Frank D. Millet, and Moseley Baker; the sculptors Onslow Ford and A-J. Dalou, who, like Alma-Tadema himself, came to London in 1870 as a refugee from the Franco-Prussian War; and F.G. Stephens, who had been a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood before he abandoned his brush for art criticism. At least three of these portraits - those of MacWhirter's daughter (1889; Swanson, no. 333) Agnes Marks, the daughter of Henry Stacy Marks (1890; Swanson, no. 342), and the wife of Marcus Stone (1895; Swanson, no. 372) - were in 'payment' for contributions to the Hall of Panels, while that of Clothilde Enid Ford, Onslow Ford's daughter (1896; Swanson, no. 376), was exchanged for a cast of her father's bust of Alma-Tadema, the sculptor's R.A. diploma work.

Mrs Wyllie is clearly shown in Alma-Tadema's studio. The famous Mexican onyx windows are not visible, as they often are in pictures with this setting, including the portrait of Maurice Sons playing the violin (1896) which was sold at Christie's in London on 11 June 1993, lot 120; but there are hints of marble walls and choice objects - an oriental ceramic vase, perhaps a piece of Renaissance metal work; and the sitter is posed on one of the studio seats which frequently appear in the artist's paintings, and one of which survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, exh. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1997, cat. no. 87). The seats were designed by Alma-Tadema himself, one side being Egyptian in style, the other Pompeian; and they were probably made by Johnstone, Norman & Co., a London firm he had employed in the mid 1880s to make the suite of furniture which he designed for the music room of the New York financier Henry Marquand. The grand piano which was the centrepiece of this ensemble was sold by Christie's in London on 7 November 1997, lot 860.

The picture was generally well received when it appeared at the New Gallery in 1893. Frederick Wedmore was a little grudging in the Magazine of Art, finding it only 'agreeable', but others were enthusiastic. F.G. Stephens, in a review in the Athanaeum, first noticed the artist's other exhibit that year, Unconscious Rivals (Bristol City Art Gallery; Swanson, no. 358). He then continued: 'The same painter contributes a charming miniature at nearly whole length of Mrs Charles Wyllie in evening dress, a cream white brocade, seated in a room the decorations of which suit her fine flesh tints, her amber-coloured fan and sash. The attitude and expression of this delightful figure are as animated as they are graceful. It is a gift to Mr C. Wyllie, the distinguished landscape painter'.

The critic on the Times also mentioned the picture's diminutive size, but felt that it transcended any limitations this might have imposed. 'Very perfect, too, is the small "Portrait of Mrs Charles Wyllie", in scale scarcely removed from a miniature, but painted with a strength and breadth to which the miniaturist cannot attain.' The writer also noted that the picture was hung as a 'pendant to...a charming little interior by Mrs Tadema.' This must have been Laura's only contribution that year, a work entitled Many Stiches, many Thoughts (no. 10 in the catalogue). It says much about our picture that it could be paired with a genre subject, no doubt one in the artist's usual 'Dutch' idiom. Alma-Tadema's portraits often have a genre-like quality of their own, and that of Mrs Wyllie, in which the sitter seems to be engaged in conversation, or perhaps about to rise and greet a visitor, is no exception. F.G. Stephens's observation that 'the attitude and expression...are as animated as they are graceful' sums it up perfectly.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Portrait of Clothilde Enid, daughter of Edward Onslow Ford



Price Realized £29,875

signed, inscribed and dedicated 'L. Alma Tadema OPCCCXXXVIII- For Friend Ford' (centre right)
oil on panel
15 3/8 x 11 3/8 in. (39.1 x 29 cm.)

Traded by Alma-Tadema to Edward Onslow Ford, Blackheath, 1896.
By descent to his wife, 1901.

The English sculptor Edward Onslow Ford's daughter, who later married Philip Riviere and then Bertram Widdrington, is depicted standing in Alma-Tadema's studio at 17 Grove End Road, St John's Wood, leaning on his famous pianoforte. Originally the portrait was traded by Alma-Tadema with Onslow Ford in return for a copy of Ford's Royal Academy Diploma sculpture, a bust of Alma-Tadema (Fig. 1). Alma-Tadema was a special friend of several other sculptors including, Jules Dalou of Paris, G.B. Amendola of Naples, George Simonds and Hamo Thornycroft of London and the American Moses Ezekiel.

The Alma-Tademas first foray in exotic interior decoration came in 1871 when they bought Townshend House and remodelled it to their own taste. They decorated it with Pompeian motifs, German glass, Mexican onyx, Spanish leather, Chinese lanterns, Dutch silver and woodwork, Japanese art, rare marble and Victorian ornaments. The pianoforte was housed in the Gold Room (Fig. 2). Later, they bought a house in Grove End Road after Townshend House was damaged by an explosion from a barge loaded with gunpowder and benzoline on the Regent's Canal in 1874.

The pianoforte was housed in the studio alcove of 17 Grove End Road (Fig. 3), which Alma-Tadema designed himself with the technical assistance of his neighbour, the architect Alfred Calderon. Originally of late eighteenth-century Dutch inspiration, the house had undergone many alterations by Tissot, its previous owner, who added a studio and a conservatory. Over the next twenty-six years it is reported that Alma-Tadema spent over £26,000 on renovations. One visitor recorded 'His house is a glimpse of his work, it is his soul seen from the interior. Whoever understands his house learns to cherish his art.' (Swanson, op. cit., 1990, p. 66).

The renovated and enlarged house allowed Alma-Tadema to entertain on a lavish scale during his Monday afternoon openings and his Tuesday evening dinners and concerts. His love of music made his unique studio the setting for a series of concerts. The testimony to his star-studded guest lists was written beneath the lid of the piano where large panels of ivory bore the signatures of musicians such as Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, Anton Rubinstein, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pablo de Sarasate. Unfortunately, the piano was destroyed in an air raid during the Second World War, whilst it was in a London warehouse.

Alma-Tadema was also associated with another spectacular piano. In 1884 he was commissioned to provide a suite of furniture for the American connoisseur Henry G. Marquand (1819-1902). Marquand, a creator and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, granted Alma-Tadema a limitless budget to embellish the Music Salon of his Madison Avenue mansion in his antique style, and in a sumptuous manner which would serve as a worthy focal point of New York society during the City's late nineteenth century Golden Age. This piano and its pair of stools was sold at Christie's, London, 7 November 1997, lot 86 (£650,000).

We are grateful to Professor Vern Swanson, Springville Museum of Art, Utah, for his help in the preparation of this catalogue entry.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Victorian Lady 3 - John OBrien




http://www.lowcostprints.com/prints/picture.asp?idProduct=7272

In Search of Biblical Lands exhibition



LAS ANGELES, CA.- In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography on view at the Getty Villa from March 2 through September 12, 2011, features some of the first photographic images of the eastern margins of the Mediterranean. This region is one of the most photographed places on earth, with subjects ranging from architectural sites to evocative geography, scenes of pastoral life, and its people. The photographs on view in this exhibition reveal what the travelers of the 1800s discovered on their journey: a landscape of belief, at once familiar yet still mysterious.

In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography features rare, early daguerreotypes, salted-paper prints, and albumen silver prints, created between the 1840s and 1900s by the leading photographers of the time, including Felice Beato, Maxime Du Camp, Auguste Salzmann, James Graham, Louis Vignes, Frank Mason Good, and Frederic Goupil-Fesquet. Due to the delicate nature of photographic materials that cannot be displayed for long periods, this exhibition features more than 100 photographs in total, divided into two installments, each on view for three-months.

Organized into five sections—Jerusalem, Early Views, Peoples of the Bible, Travels in Bible Lands, and Expeditions Beyond the Dead Sea—the photographs, made for study by scholars or produced as souvenirs as well as works of art, were presented by photographers and publishers in ways designed to foster viewers’ religious identification with the region. Subjects include Bethlehem, Nazareth, Petra, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Damascus Gate, Saint Stephen’s Gate, the Ecce Homo Arch, the Al Aqsa Mosque, Walls of the Temple Mount, The Garden of Gethsemane, the Dome of the Rock, the River Jordan, the Pool of Hezekiah, and Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

Propelled by a connection to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and encouraged by texts recently discovered in Egypt and Assyria, explorers, entrepreneurs, amateurs, academics, and tourists alike descended upon the Holy Land in the 19th century to be among the first to photograph the sites previously only imagined and represented in paintings, prints, and drawings. The advent of photography and the increasing popularity of travel provided a new standard for authenticity, immediacy, and truthfulness in pictorial representations, fundamentally changing aesthetic and scholarly approaches to ancient places.

But the birth of photography also presented a challenge for those taking the pictures as they wrestled with recording and interpreting this land that fused geography with history, mystery, and belief. While the shared legacy of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths formed a space of enormous spiritual significance, there was pressure to make images that assured people that the landscape and places so important to them from Bible study or religious observance were real, if not dramatic. It proved no easy task, as what they saw did not fit with the Holy Land of their imagination, fostered by idealized illustrations and even common rhetoric—Jerusalem being the “shining city on the hill” or Palestine “the land of milk and honey.”

“There were no big ruins as in Egypt, no soaring mountains as in the American West, but the humble reality of small villages, ancient footpaths winding along steep hillsides, had tremendous emotional weight for people,” explains Kathleen Stewart Howe, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel 23 Director of the Pomona College Museum of Art and professor of Art History and guest curator of this exhibition. “Ultimately, reality trumped spectacular effects.”

Peddlers in Jerusalem, lepers, shepherds dressed in native costumes, and tourists camping on horseback are just some of the images that speak to the tourist fascination with the Holy Land. They are shown through photographs, photographically illustrated books, and albums, many of which were made by the studio of French photographer Félix Bonfils (18311885) and collected by the Department of Photographs of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute, the latter by means of a recent acquisition from the Orientalist Photography Collection of 4,500 photographic images of the Middle East and North Africa.

Highlights of the exhibition are photographs by English photographer Francis Frith (18221898), whose compelling images were made during three trips to the Holy Land in the late 1850s, and daguerreotypes by French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (18041892) from his three-year tour of the Near East, culled from the Getty Museum’s collection.

Visitors can see the region up-close through stereoscope tours on two large stereo viewers that digitally replicate the three-dimensional immersive experience. Each viewer has a selection of 12 cards that recreate a journey around Jerusalem and Palestine with particular attention paid to objects and places of interest and local color connected through scriptural citation.

Also of considerable note are a series of photographs made during the Duc de Luynes subsidized expedition to the Dead Sea and beyond, including views of ruined Crusader castles in what is now Jordan, and of Petra, the city carved out of rosy sandstone that had been first visited by Europeans in 1828 and is now a world heritage site in Jordan. These rare images come from the GRI’s acquisition of the entire publication of the Duc de Luyne voyage.

In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography is guest curated by Kathleen Stewart Howe, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel 23 Director of the Pomona College Museum of Art and Professor of Art History. Dr. Howe participated in the Getty’s Museum Leadership Institute program and was formerly an intern in the Department of Photographs. She is the author of Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine, published by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1997.

Charles Spencelayh - 'Much noise, little music'



Price Realized £16,730

signed 'C.SPENCELAYH.' (lower right) signed again and inscribed '"MUCH NOISE LITTLE MUSIC"/COPYRIGHT RESERVED/C. SPENCELAYH.' (on the backboard)
pencil and watercolour heightened with touches of bodycolour
10½ x 14¾ in. (26.7 x 37.5 cm.)

Spencelayh's meticulously finished and wryly observed portrayals of individuals within their domestic or working environments have rightly attained great popularity. His subjects are often older men, surrounded by the paraphernalia of their past and present hobbies and interests. The present watercolour is a particularly good example of this type. The individual in question has dozed to sleep in his chair; sonorous snores have replaced a trumpeter's tunes. The neatness of this conceit is completed by the picture's status as a visual piece; we derive only pleasure from the detailed composition.

Detail is the hallmark of Spencelayh's work. Every object in this room is finely rendered; textures are equally well-evoked, from the thin geranium leaves to the cockerel's silky plume. The newspaper and wall calendar are also characteristic Spencelayh touches: fragments of daily life, rarely depicted in art, that enhance both the realism and gentle humour of his work.

Charles Spencelayh - The dear lot




Price Realized £59,750

signed 'SPENCELAYH' (lower left) and further signed and inscribed 'Charles Spencelayh R.M.S. 19, Queen's Road. West Didsbury Manchester. Title "A Dear Lot" No 4.' (on an old label on the reverse)
oil on panel
9 x 6 7/8 in. (22.9 x 17.5 cm.)

Abraham Solomon


George Clarkson Stanfield



http://www.artnet.com/artist/16003/george-clarkson-stanfield.html

Charles Spencelayh - Bromfield Bridge, near Ludlow, Shropshire





Price Realized £2,750

signed and dated 'Charles Spencelayh/1890' (lower right) and signed, inscribed and dated 'BROMFIELD/NEAR LUDLOW/SALOP/PAINTED BY./C.SPENCELAYH./1901.' (on the reverse) and signed and inscribed 'Charles Spencelayh. R.M.S., H.M.R.B.S.A./"The Mildred" Bozeal-/Wellingborough./No 1./Bromfield Bridge/Shropshire./Title' (on the artist's label on the reverse)
oil on canvas laid down on board
12 7/8 x 14 1/8 in. (32.7 x 35.9 cm.)

Friday, December 24, 2010

Seven Dials by Boz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials

Vitorian and Edwardian Art results






http://www.sothebys.com/pdf/2010/29904/L10133.pdf



http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotResultsDetailList.jsp?
event_id=29904&sale_number=L10133

George Owen Wynne Apperley - Summer Night



watercolour with bodycolour
62 by 91cm.; 24½ by 35½in.
ESTIMATE 25,000 - 35,000 GBP


Apperley has been described as one of the finest of the last romantics. Descended from a long noble line of the d'Apperleys of Normandy, he was also the grandson of the famous sporting journalist 'Nimrod'. His ambition to be an artist was fulfilled at an early age, studying at Herkomer Academy, at Bushey, and first exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1905.

In 1916 he moved to Spain for his health, leaving behind his first wife and two children. He never returned, finding the Spanish landscape and people an endless source of inspiration. He travelled around the country finally settling in Granada in his beloved Andalusia, setting up his studio close to the gypsy quarter.

In the first and second decade of the 20th Century Apperley painted a series of sophisticated and sensual classical narrative pictures inspired by the Old Masters, particularly Titian and Veronese. With this in mind, strong parallels can be drawn between Titian's Venus of Urbino and this present portrait of Apperley's second wife, Enriqueta Contreras. Although the composition is reversed, both women recline across a day bed, their gaze directed at the viewer. Each holds a rose, and has her legs identically folded, with a drawn curtain revealing classical architecture and a sky at twilight beyond. Apperley's scene is made even more evocative with the sensual reference to fertility in the pomegranate tree. A final note of exoticism and mystery is struck in the reddish hues that bathe the 14th Century Moorish palace of the Alhambra as it glows in the evening light.

http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/george-owen-wynne-apperley-1884-1960-d1hm3njp3g-0-m-6nuw9816p1