Watercolours

In 1922, Beatrix Potter, with her most famous little books already behind her, was persuaded by Anne Carroll Moore of the New York Public Library to produce a book of illustrated nursery rhymes.

Three pictures of London Zoo, produced within a few years of its opening to the public, were sold by Lawrences of Crewkerne on July 6.

Only the day after a specialist sale at Bonhams, the June 29 auction at Strides of Chichester included two 3 x 2in (7 x 5.5cm) watercolour-on-vellum portraits by greats of the Commonwealth/Carolean age that trumped anything seen on Bond Street.

Pictures, books and ephemera from the Great Tew estate in Oxfordshire will be offered for sale at Holloway’s in Banbury on July 10.

Duncan Campbell was a remarkable and unconventional dealer. His gallery in Thackeray Street, Kensington, was packed with pretty much anything that caught his eye, whether it was paintings, prints, pottery, furniture, or tribal art.

On May 19, Channel Island auctioneers Martel Maides are set to offer the first single-owner house sale on Jersey for almost a decade with an on-site 500-lot sale of The Priors in St Saviours.

A studio collection of works by Charles James Adams (1859-1931), best known for his animal pictures, is to be offered at The Cotswold Auctions’ specialist picture sale on May 18 in Cirencester.

IN February we revealed how Queen Victoria was an accomplished artist, but now her daughter’s skills have been highlighted by a Surrey auction.

A UNIQUE archive of original Enid Blyton material is being offered for sale by her elder daughter's estate at Ilkley auctioneers Hartley's on September 15.

Among a series of records for British watercolours posted during Sotheby's sale entitled An Exceptional Eye: A Private British Collection on July 14, the most spectacular price was the £2.1m bid for this striking view of the Lake of Albano and Castel Gandolfo by John Robert Cozens (1752-1797).

THIS outstanding Louise Rayner (1832-1924) watercolour, depicting the Butter Market at Ludlow, Shropshire, posted a new house record for Louis Taylor of Stoke-on-Trent at their latest sale.

BY 1780, John Trumbull (1756-1843), a budding young artist from Lebanon, Connecticut who had sketched the Revolutionary War, found himself in grave difficulty.

A Borders property provided Thomson Roddick (15% buyer's premium) with a sensational discovery for their sale in Rosewell, Edinburgh on December 4.

A Mary Fedden watercolour is among the items for sale on the philanthropic auction site www.buyoncegivetwice.co.uk

A TOUCH of spring arrived in Dorchester on April 10-11 where amongst a number of five-figure prices at Duke’s two-day sale was this tiny watercolour of a branch of cherry blossom by the prolific Victorian theorist, critic and artist John Ruskin (1819-1900). Dated 1857, it is displayed here a fraction less than its actual size.

Dukes have negotiated the sale to the nation of two major Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Music by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones and Hamlet and Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti were found in the Oxfordshire home of the late Jean Preston that also yielded two panels from the San Marco altarpiece by Fra Angelico sold by the Dorchester auctioneers last year for £1.7m.

The Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds scenes illustrated here are part of a superb group of 51 miniatures dating from the last years of the 12th century.

SMALL in size but large in shock value, this portrait miniature stunned the Gorringes’ saleroom when it sold at £90,000 plus 17.5 per cent buyer’s premium on December 6.

Art dealer Andrew Sim has sold a watercolour by Richard Dadd (1817-1886) to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It is the first work by the enigmatic Victorian artist to enter the museum’s vast art collection.

Cheshire auctioneer Sir Patrick Cheyne will sell a remarkable cache of work by the Sheffield School watercolourist George Hamilton Constantine (1878-1967) on September 7.