Watercolours

PORTRAIT MINIATURES: A substantial selection of silhouettes and a collection of wax portraits boosted the content of a 311-lot middle ranking sale of portrait miniatures held by Bonhams on March 12.

In 1805, William Blake was commissioned by Robert Harley Cromek to make a set of 40 drawings to illustrate Robert Blair’s poem The Grave, 20 of which Cromek proposed to have engraved by Blake.

LONDON is especially strong on niche events and specialist fairs do not come much more quintessentially English than The Watercolours and Drawings Fair which will be held for the fourth time at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, London W1 from January 31 to February 3.

The bird with the splendid hairdo pictured right is one of five original watercolours, possibly by Madam Knip herself, found in a special copy of Temminck & Knip’s Histoire naturelle des Pigeons of 1801-11 that sold for £30,000 to a private buyer at Christie’s November 28 sale.

She lived by her pen, but died by her brush. If Charlotte Brontë had been remotely skilled as a portrait artist she might not have turned to literary characterisations.

One of the advantages of being an auction house with offices and salerooms spread around the country is that items with regional associations can be sold in the areas with the relevant local interest. This is precisely what happened on November 8 when the signed Louise Rayner (1832-1924) watercolour that had originally been consigned to Phillips Bath came up for sale 120 miles and one corporate take-over away at Bonhams Chester (15/10% buyer’s premium).

PORTRAIT miniatures are one field that has been performing strongly in recent seasons, an area of the market where the private buyer is very much in evidence.

IN May 1967 Caroline Lumley and Camilla Cazalet quickly began establishing Lumley Cazalet (33 Davies Street, W1K 4LR. Tel: 020 7491 4767) as leading specialists in late 19th and 20th century prints, with an emphasis on the French School.

It’s a case of two days only with Ryan Fine Art’s (74 Vanbrugh Park, Blackheath, SE3 7JQ. Tel: 020 8293 5300) exhibition of over 80 Victorian and European oils, watercolours and prints.

Illustrated is one of Lord Frederic Leighton’s most famous compositions Flaming June. This 41/2in by 41/4in colour sketch for the painting was understandably one of the sensations of Sotheby’s dispersal of the Leverhulme Collection at Thornton Manor, Merseyside, on June 26-28.

UK: NINETEENTH century genre paintings with strong narrative and moralising elements have not been the strongest performers at auction in recent years.

UK: INSET with a portrait miniature, this 1925 Golden Cockerel edition of Songs... by Robert Burns, illustrated with wood engravings by Mabel Annesley and bound in Cosway style in red morocco gilt by Bayntun Rivière, was sold at Bonhams (Buyer’s premium:15/10 per cent) at £1400 (Pirouages).

A MAJOR cataloguing project at the Museum of Cincinnati in Ohio has authenticated up to 15 very important and hitherto unrecorded portrait miniatures by the likes of Nicholas Hilliard.

UK: Sotheby’s are hoping one of the most important watercolours by J.M.W. Turner to come to the rostrum will smash all previous auction records for the artist when it comes under the hammer in London on June 14.

Treasures To Hold: Irish and English Miniatures 1650-1850 from the National Gallery of Ireland Collection by Dr Paul Caffrey, published by the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. tel: 01 661 5133. email: artgall@eircom.net ISBN 090316275X £19.99.

UK: FEW silhouettes are as desirable as those portraits of military officers produced by John Buncombe, and few of those are as valuable as the example illustrated here, which was the highlight of a residual 17-lot group of silhouettes from the Christie Collection, consigned to Christie’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) South Kensington sale on March 14.

ELABORATE multi-figure conversation pieces are amongst the most sought-after classes of silhouette.

UK: TONY BANKS MP and former ministers Kenneth Baker and Peter Brooke were among those registering their interests at a sale of political commemoratives held by Special Auction Services on June 13 at the Courtyard Hotel, Padworth.

UK: A MAJOR loan exhibition of Dutch and Flemish cabinet pictures opens at Richard Green’s gallery at 33 New Bond Street, London W1 this week.