Tag: Auction Highlights

Kings, Queens and Prints

Portrait of King Henry VIII
Lot 235: Engraving by Cornelis Massijs, Portrait of King Henry VIII

The Sale of Selected Fine Oil Paintings, Watercolours and Prints on the 21st March 2012 includes a Single-owner Collection of Portrait Prints.  The collection offers works printed in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and relates chiefly to the royalty, nobility and notable figures of the eras.

The 75-lot collection includes an engraving by Cornelis Massijs of King Henry VIII (Lot 235).  Massijs (or Massys, as his surname is sometimes spelt) was born in Antwerp but was banished from the city later in life.  While living in exile in England he produced this print in 1544, which was reprinted in the year of the King’s death.  It is a contemporary image of the Tudor King late in life, portraying Henry VIII with emphasis on his authority.  Massijs shows his imposing figure and carefully designed clothes, wearing an elegantly embroidered doublet and a sumptuous fur collar. The full-frontal pose is probably loosely based on Hans Holbein’s portrait of the sitter a decade earlier.

Another impressive engraving in the sale (Lot 240) depicts Queen Elizabeth I standing full length, holding an orb and sceptre.  Anthony Griffiths in The Print in Stuart Britain states: “This is the finest of the engraved portraits of Queen Elizabeth.  It was published soon after her death in 1603, as is shown by the chronogram in the upper left.”  The engraving is after Isaac Oliver, a miniaturist born in Rouen and brought to England as a child (for a portrait of the artist, see Lot 232).  This print is the culmination of the partnership between Hans Woutneel in London and Crispijn van de Passe I, then in Cologne.

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I
Lot 240: Engraving by Crispijn van de Passe after Isaac Oliver, Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I

Crispijn van de Passe the Elder was a Dutch printmaker and founder of a dynasty of engravers.  The second generation of van de Passe engravers – Simon, Crispijn II, Willem and Magdalena – are all also represented in the private collection, including famous images of Princess Pocahontas (Lot 251) and the Gunpowder Plot Conspirators (Lot 259).  The Single-owner Collection of Portrait Prints serves almost as a Who’s Who of the 1500s onwards.  The majority of the collection centres around kings, queens and their families, represented from Henry VIII to Queen Victoria.  Other notable figures are also depicted in the portrait engravings, such as Richard [Dick] Whitington and his cat (Lot 233), the Elizabethan explorer Francis Drake (Lots 248, 249 & 250), Robert Dudley (Lot 246), Francis Bacon (Lot 260) and depictions of the curious character of Old Tom Parr (Lot 269), who reputedly lived to the age of 153!

This immensely interesting collection will be offered at Toovey’s Spring Gardens salerooms, just off the A24 between Worthing and Horsham, on 21st March. To view the online catalogue for the sale, or to find out viewing times, visit www.tooveys.com

William Lionel Wyllie Etchings in Toovey’s March Auction

The Sale of Selected Fine Oil Paintings, Watercolours and Prints on the 21st March 2012 includes a single-owner collection of works by William Lionel Wyllie, offered for sale by auction in 28 lots at Toovey’s Spring Gardens salerooms.

Wyllie was born in 1851 into an artistic family, studying art at Heatherley’s in 1865 and at the RA Schools 1866-1869, winning the Turner medal in 1869.  He worked as an illustrator for The Graphic and exhibited extensively.  He was elected R.I., A.R.A., A.R.E., R.E. and R.A.  In 1906, Wyllie moved to Portsmouth, where he lived for many years.  His panorama of the Battle of Trafalgar hangs in the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.  Wyllie died in London in 1931.

He is best remembered for his maritime works and the W.L. Wyllie signature is almost synonymous with etchings of the River Thames and the Solent.  The fashion-led world of art, however, has a habit of changing and Wyllie was not always as collected as he is today.  In 1929, during the period of etching revival, James Laver in A History of British and American Etching described his prints as “a wealth of detail seen through a haze of romance.”  In 1981, Kenneth Guichard in British Etchers 1850-1950 states rather critically: “Only a few years ago print dealers shamefacedly produced them [Wyllie etchings] from bottom drawers at a pound a time, together with [other] near throw-outs.”  Today, he is a highly collected name and the prices achieved for his etchings regularly outshine those achieved for the works of many of his contemporaries, including some of the founders of the etching revival in Britain, such as Francis Seymour Haden.

William Lionel Wyllie etching, 'The City of London'
Lot 6, 'The City of London', trial proof etching by William Lionel Wyllie

In the selection of prints, Lot 6 is a true rarity for the William Lionel Wyllie collector.  ‘The City of London’ is an etching in trial state with only partially etched details, the rest of the image composed with pencil and watercolour in a much freer stylistic way.  This trial proof would have been used to map out the finished print and, as such, is a unique version of this image and carries a presale estimate of £400-600.  The collection also includes prints of the Solent, prints of military interest and prints of picturesque views along the Thames, many featuring London landmarks, such as Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.  There is also one original watercolour in the collection (Lot 13).  Somewhat unusually, though, Wyllie’s watercolours tend to achieve the same price levels as his etchings at auction.

To view the William Lionel Wyllie collection (Lots 1-28) in our auction of Selected Fine Oil Paintings, Watercolours and Prints, click here.

Chinese jade carvings for sale at Toovey’s

Chinese jade carving of an elephant
Lot 1105: A Chinese jade carving of an elephant covered in a profusion of folds and wrinkles

The Chinese jade table screen that sold for £120,000 (featured previously) was one of the more memorable auction prices achieved at our Spring Gardens salerooms last year. Toovey’s Specialist Sales of Oriental Ceramics and Works of Art provided numerous other highlights from objects originating from China and Japan. The first Specialist Oriental Auction of 2012 at Toovey’s (and the first of the Chinese New Year) on Thursday 23rd February includes a collection of mostly 18th and 19th Century jade carvings (Lots 1105 to 1119), consigned from the estate of a lady collector, late of Banbury, Oxfordshire. The consignment includes pendants, vases, carvings, inkstones and plaques. A collection of other jades have also been consigned from other vendors.

Jade is a mineralogically imprecise term for various kinds of hard-stone, more frequently referring to nephrite (a calcium magnesium silicate) and similar jadeite (a sodium-aluminium silicate). The wide-embracing term ‘jade’ can in fact encompass over 150 different varieties of stone. The English term for what in China is called yü (玉) is derived from the Spanish piedra di hijada, or ‘stone of the loins’, as it was believed to be healing to that part of the body. “In ancient times“, said Confucius, the Chinese thinker and social philosopher, “men found the likeness of all excellent qualities in jade. Soft, smooth, and glossy, it appeared to them like benevolence; fine, compact and strong – like intelligence; angular, but not sharp and cutting – like righteousness; hanging down [in beads or pendants] as if it would fall to the ground – like [the humility of] propriety; when struck, yielding a note, clear and prolonged, yet terminating abruptly – like music; its flaws not concealing its beauty; nor its beauty concealing its flaws – like loyalty; with an internal radiance issuing from it on every side – like good faith; bright as a brilliant rainbow – like heaven; exquisite and mysterious, appearing in the hills and streams – like the earth; standing out conspicuously in the symbols of rank – like virtue; esteemed by all under the sky – like the path of truth and duty” [Legge (translator): Li Ki, Book XLV.] Since Neolithic times jade has been of central importance in China. No other stone has had such a continuous relationship with humankind in our social and religious development. Centuries before the Christian era we find it arbitrarily symbolic of Heaven and Earth. It is this representation of virtue and its symbolic history that ranks jade as the most precious of stones amongst the Chinese.

Lot 1105 (illustrated above), to be offered for sale as part of the collection in the February auction, is carved from a stone of celedon green tone. The elephant is symbolic of prudence, strength and wisdom and has always been sacred to Buddhism, this 15cm long carving carries a pre-sale estimate of £1000-1500. Many of the carvings offered in the February auction are of auspicious animals, chosen for their specific symbolic meanings. The Banbury collection to be offered in Toovey’s February Specialist Sale includes Chinese works of art decorated with the ram (a symbol of kindness and patience), fish (symbols of rank and power and later, the symbol of marital bliss), Buddhistic lions (often placed at the entrance of religious buildings, and associated with upholding the law), cranes (endowed with many mythical attributes and considered the aerial courser of the immortals), deer and Lingzhi fungus (both symbols of longevity).

Further images of  jade carvings included in the collection:

(Please click on an image for description and full-view, click again for further magnification)

The Forester and Troughton-Smith Family Archive

A selection of items from The Forester and Troughton-Smith Family Archive

Toovey’s are pleased to announce that they have been instructed to offer at auction a unique archive chronicling the life and career of the author C.S. Forester. This exceptional collection offers a combination of books that belonged to Forester himself, books inscribed to his second wife, and books which he presented to his nephew. In addition to these books, the archive includes various material relating to C.S. Forester, including a bronze sculpture, documents, letters and some fascinating ephemera.

Much like his most famous literary creations, Forester was in a number of ways a contradictory character. Born in Egypt to English parents on 27 August 1899, Forester’s birth certificate gives his name as Cecil Louis Troughton Smith but he took up the nom de plume of Cecil Scott Forester when he started writing. Unusually, he then took the reinvention a stage further and used ‘C.S. Forester’ in his everyday as well as his literary life. Brought up in England, the product of the English Public school system, Forester chose to spend much of his working life in California but nevertheless found his greatest success with a book about an unlikely odd couple in Central Africa during the 1st World War (The African Queen), and a whole series about an English naval hero during the Napoleonic war (the story of Horatio Hornblower). The creator of an archetypal action hero, Forester was in contrast left a partial invalid in his forties as a result of arteriosclerosis. In 1961 he suffered a severe heart attack and was largely immobilized in 1964 after a stroke. He died in California on 2nd April 1966.

Forester married his first wife, Kathleen Belcher, in 1926. They had two children, John and George, but divorced in 1945. In 1947, he married Dorothy Ellen Foster; the marriage was initially kept secret and was not publicly acknowledged until February 1949. The couple continued to live in California until Forester’s death. They had remained close to Forester’s nephew Stephen Troughton-Smith, who viewed Forester as a father-like figure. Sometime after Forester’s death, Dorothy chose to move back to Sussex, England, to be closer to her family. Later, Dorothy was looked after by Stephen and his wife, who, when she became increasingly frail, moved in with her.

After Dorothy’s death on 10th June 1998, the books, sculpture and other important related items that her husband had given or bequeathed to her, together with the books that they had both been given by grateful publishers, were left to Stephen Troughton-Smith. Mr Troughton-Smith combined these books with the books that C.S Forester had inscribed to him and a few other related items to form the Forester and Troughton-Smith Family Archive. Stephen Troughton-Smith died earlier this year and a family decision was made to offer the contents of the archive to a wider audience and thus enhance C.S. Forester’s already solid reputation as one of the great British novelists of the 20th Century.

The archive will be offered for sale at Toovey’s Spring Gardens salerooms as part of their Antiquarian and Collectors’ Books auction on 21st February 2012, to view the free online auction catalogue click here.

Further images of the Forester and Troughton-Smith Family Archive:

(Please click on an image for full-view and again for further magnification)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel & The Great Eastern ABC

Great Eastern A.B.C., or Big Ship Alphabet Children's Book

Many regular followers of Toovey’s auctions will remember the remarkable single-owner collection, the Brunel Hawes Archive, offered for sale in November 2010. All items were entered by a descendant of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel. Sir Marc was an eminent engineer, but arguably overshadowed by his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The prices realised at the single-owner sale undoubtedly provided a market correction in values for items relating to the Brunel family at auction. With the accompanying national press attention after such a sale, some other Brunel-related material was entered by other vendors and successfully sold at Toovey’s Sussex auction house throughout 2011. This year looks set to be no different, with a very interesting children’s book already consigned and entered for the specialist Antiquarian and Collectors’ Book auction on 21st February. Titled The Great Eastern ABC, or, Big Ship Alphabet. Designed alike for the instruction of youth and the entertainment of all ages and conditions, the 16-page book (including the printed wrappers) is a surprising rarity, published just after the death by drowning of Captain Harrison on 21st January 1860.

It has 26 hand-coloured wood-engraved vignettes, one for each alphabetic couplet, including a pasted-over slip below a portrait of Harrison standing on deck, stating ‘H stood for poor Harrison – How sad was his fate! / It now stands for Hall, appointed of late’, perhaps making this charming book an unrecorded variant or second issue of an already scarce title. The original version published in time to be noted in ‘The Athenaeum Journal’ of 28th January 1860 and ‘The Economist’ of 14 January 1860, stated ‘H is for Harrison her skilful commander, / None can excel him (without any slander)’.

Every page in the book has delightful vignette illustrations but perhaps the most interesting from a collector’s point of view is a portrait of Isambard Kingdom Brunel above ‘B stands for Brunel that famed engineer, / With whom, it is said, arose the idea’. The children’s book is bound in the original printed thin card wrappers, the upper cover blocked with the title and integral vignette, the backstrip reinforced with 19th Century paper. The little book does have minor condition issues, including a little damp-staining, but for a paperback book of this age, intended for the use of children, it has survived in remarkably good condition. Perhaps this is the reason it is such a rarity, or perhaps it is because sales were poor as the boat’s subsequent ill-fated career proved to be a far from ideal example for young children. This is speculation, but Toovey’s have not been able to find another copy of the same title selling at auction in the last thirty years. This wonderful collector’s book will be offered at Toovey’s Washington salerooms with the potentially conservative pre-sale estimate of £1000-1500. (Please click on an image to make it larger, and again for further magnification)