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Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Study of a Horse with a Rider. Estimate $1,000,000 — 1,500,000. Lot Sold $5,075,000. Photo: Courtesy Sotheby's.
NEW YORK, NY.- Yesterday, Sotheby’s morning sale of Old Master Drawings and evening sale of Master Paintings & Sculpture, part of the annual Masters Week in New York, together realised a total of $31.8 million. The sale was led by a newly-discovered work by the celebrated Flemish painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens. A rare example of a large-scale animal study by the artist, Study of a Horse with a Rider had been until recently described as by a follower of Sir Anthony Van Dyck. However, the authorship had been difficult to discern due to overpaint and background added later, which dominated the original scene. With the removal of these later additions, the canvas has been revealed as a work of high quality, and a typical example of the spirited and rapidly-painted oil sketches for which Rubens is celebrated.
(Cf. my post Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577 - 1640 Antwerpt), Study of a Horse with a Rider)
Regarding the Master Paintings & Sculpture sale, Christopher Apostle, Head of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department in New York, yesterday commented: “This evening we saw exceptional prices for several exceptional pictures – this market understands and appreciates a masterpiece when it sees one. That applies both to famed artists like Rubens and Botticelli, who continue to attract a global audience, as well as names celebrated among connoisseurs like Drost and de Coster, both of whom saw new auction records set tonight. We had strong private bidding across our field, including participation from Asian and Russian collectors, with Dutch 17th-century pictures, early Italian, and Flemish works performing particularly well.”
Further auction highlights
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Lot 20. Willem Drost (Amsterdam 1633 - 1659 Venezia), Flora,oil on canvas; 39 by 33 in.; 99 by 84 cm. Estimate $400 000-600,000. Sold for $4,625,000. NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR AN ARTIST
Six bidders competed for Flora, one of Willem Drost’s finest works. The sale of the work for $4.6 million marks a new auction record for the artist, breaking the previous record set in 1992.
Provenance: By descent in a European family.
Notes: William Drost’s enchanting Flora was painted during the artist’s brief stay in Venice during the 1650s and has hitherto remained unknown to scholars. The work should be considered one of Drost’s very best paintings, comparable to his undisputed masterpiece, the Bathsheba in the Louvre (fig. 1). It is a remarkable synthesis of the artist’s early training in Amsterdam under Rembrandt and the more mature style he developed in Venice, when he came under the direct spell of Titian, to whom this work is a clear homage. Titian's own Flora (fig. 2) is known to have been in Amsterdam in the collection of Alfonso López, a Spaniard in the service of Cardinal Richelieu, but Drost probably did not see it in person. Rembrandt almost certainly did, and Drost would very likely have been aware of the design through drawings and prints of it. It is only once Drost arrived in Venice that he finally would have had direct access to a multitude of works by the Venetian master. Drost's interpretation of the subject thus successfully combines elements from the most important school of painting from the Dutch 17th century with the legacy of Venice's greatest artist.
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fig.1. Willem Drost, Bathsheba receiving letter from David. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France © R.M.N./G. Blot
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fig. 2. Titian, Flora, oil on canvas / Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy / Bridgeman Images
Venetian art of the 16th century was certainly quite widely known in artistic circles in Amsterdam when Rembrandt and Drost were active. Several works are recorded in some of the leading collections of the day and the dissemination of prints meant that Italian art was studied with some ease and with great interest by northern artists. Venetian depictions of courtesans by masters such as Paris Bordone and Palma Vecchio (fig. 3), were a repeated source of inspiration, as both the Louvre Bathsheba and the Young Woman in a brocade gown in the Wallace Collection, London, would suggest.2 Drost’s Young Woman with Pearls in Dresden, particularly in its depiction of the puffed sleeve hanging over the balustrade, is a clear response to Titian’s Portrait of a Man, formerly thought to depict the poet Ariosto which is today in London’s National Gallery but which also belonged to López.3 That picture was certainly known to Rembrandt too, for his Self Portrait, also in the National Gallery, London, once more pays direct homage to Titian’s portrait.4
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fig. 3. Palma Vecchio, A Blonde Woman, oil on wood, about 1520, National Gallery, London.
Drost's Bathsheba in the Louvre is signed and dated 1654, and so was painted very shortly before the artist's trip to Italy. It is of little surprise then that the present Flora should display a number of striking similarities to the Paris picture, and these extend well beyond the fact that both figures are shown bare-breasted. Both compositions are characterised by a circular movement which traces its motion through the arms. The figures are shown close to the picture plane and fill the pictorial space. The heads are tilted in the same alluring and seductive way. The expansive white sleeves glow in the warm light which allows the highlights of the hair to shimmer and emerge from the darkness behind the heads. Similar brushwork can be found in the ex-Rothschild Man with a plumed beret sold in these Rooms in 1997.5
The rediscovery of the present work allow us to re-evaluate Drost’s stylistic development in Italy, for his Italian oeuvre reveals a strong affinity for the Tenebrist style prevalent in Venice at the time. Indeed, his Italian paintings have at times been confused with the work of the German artist Johann Carl Loth, who was active in Venice and perhaps best exemplifies Venetian tenebrism. As Dr. Jonathan Bikker, author of the catalogue raisonné dedicated to Drost, notes, it had been assumed based on the extant paintings from the artist’s Italian sojourn that Drost had lost interest in the 16th century Venetian prototypes which had so informed his style while he was still in Amsterdam. However, the present Flora, which was almost certainly painted in Venice, directly contradicts that idea and confirms that Titian continued to be a crucial source of inspiration.
We are grateful to Dr. Jonathan Bikker for endorsing the attribution following first-hand inspection and for his kind assistance in cataloguing the work.
1. See J. Bikker, Willem Drost, A Rembrandt Pupil in Amsterdam and Venice, Yale 2005, pp. 55-57, cat. no. 2, reproduced in color.
2. Ibid., pp. 69-72, cat. no. 8, reproduced in color.
3. Ibid., pp. 67-69, cat. no. 7, reproduced in color; see P. Humfrey, Titian, The Complete Paintings, Bruges 2007, p. 61, cat. no. 24, reproduced in color.
4. P. Lecaldano, L'opera pittorica completa di Rembrandt, Milan 1969, p. 109, cat. no. 233, reproduced.
5. Bikker, op. cit., pp. 81-84, cat. no. 14, reproduced in color.
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Lot 23. Adam de Coster (Mechelen 1585/6 - 1643 Antwerpt), A young woman holding a distaff before a lit candle, oil on canvas, 52 3/4 by 37 3/8 in.; 134 by 94.9 cm. Estimate $1.5000,000-2,000,000. Sold for $4,850,000. NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR AN ARTIST. Photo: Sotheby's
Adam de Coster’s dramatic nocturne again set a new auction record for the artist, surpassing the previous record it had established at Sotheby’s in 1992. On offer from the collection of J.E. Safra the work remains one of the most significant additions in recent decades to the artist’s small catalogue.
(Cf. my spot: Adam de Coster (Mechelen 1585/6 - 1643 Antwerpt), A young woman holding a distaff before a lit candle)
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Lot 38. Orazio Gentileschi (Pisa 1563 - 1639 London), Head of a Woman, oil on panel, 16 1/2 by 14 3/8 in.; 42 by 37 cm. Estimate $2,000,000 — 3,000,000. Sold for $1,812,500. Photo: Sotheby's
One of only two known panel paintings, Gentieleschi’s Head of a Woman was executed during the first half of the 1630s, when the artist was working at the court of King Charles I of England. The work was last seen in public in the landmark exhibition on Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001. Proceeds from the painting will in part benefit the department of European Painting and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
(Cf. my post: Orazio Gentileschi (Pisa 1563 - 1639 London), Head of a Woman)
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Lot32. Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), Los caprichos. [madrid: printed by rafael esteve for the artist, 1799.]. Estimate $500,000-700,000. Sold for $912,500. Photo: Sotheby's
80 plates on a single uniform stock of unwatermarked laid paper: etchings with burnished aquatint, many with drypoint and/or burin. Some spotting. 11 5/8 x 7 6/8 in.; 295 x 195 mm.
Binding: Strictly contemporary Spanish brown roan with corners, 3 gold-tooled fleurons repeated, painted paper on boards, red fore-edges. Joints and spine rubbed, corners bumped.
Provenance: Don Blas Ametller y Rottlan (bookplate) - Jaime Andreu (autograph note on the endpaper) - Sold at Christian Denesle Auctioneer, Rouen, France, 14 March 1990, lot 9, sold for FF1,500,000)
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Blas Ametller y Rottlan. Retrato de Ventura Rodríguez. Collecction de la Biblioteca Nacional de España.
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Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Ventura Rodriguez, oil on canvas, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
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Blas Ametller y Rottlan. Retrato del general Jose de Urrutia. Colleccion Real Academia Española.
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Notes: First edition, very fine early impressions of all the aquatints, of Goya’s first and most celebrated printed work.
An exceptional copy in a strictly contemporary Spanish binding.
The prints were pulled in light sepia ink, here with deeply impressed plate-marks and full margins; trial proofs or the earliest sets of the first edition: “A scratch running from the left nostril through the chin of the figure in the background appears very early in the first serial printing from the plates. In general, the trial proofs and the earliest sets of the first edition are before the scratch” (Harris, 80). Goya's Caprichos, is generally considered his finest work, and remembered for its satirical presentation of society’s follies; many specific themes and allusions, satirical or not, defy interpretation.
The printing of 300 copies (24,000 plates) was very ambitious and very few copies were sold in the first 4 years (the actual number is thought to be 27– this copy is one of these). "Indeed, in publishing his Caprichos in 1799, Goya appears to have involved himself in a commercial undertaking perhaps unique in the life of any artist-engraver past or present. Apparently carried away with enthusiasm for the art of engraving, he acquired more than eighty costly copperplates which he etched and aquatined and from which he then printed some three hundred sets, making a total of about twenty-four thousand impressions. These he advertised in the Madrid daily newspapers, as being for sale in a perfume and liqueur shop in the Calle del Desengaño No 1 above which he had lived and was probably still living at the time. The subjects were satirical, the compositions were unconventional, the technique was novel, and it is not surprising that his enterprise, unsponsored and purely private, should have met with failure in the Madrid of his day. In the course of four years he only succeeded in selling twenty-seven sets of engravings" (Harris I, p. 7).
Despite the rather inauspicious start, Los Caprichos ultimately became Goya's most popular and influential series; Domenico Tiepolo owned a set, as did Eugène Delacroix, who borrowed freely from Goya's images. No fewer than twelve editions were printed between 1799 and 1937, and it was primarily because of Los Caprichos that Goya became known outside Spain.
Contrary to his later printed works, no title page was printed; the famous self-portrait served as the frontispiece to the work. Copies in contemporary Spanish bindings, with contemporary Spanish provenance are of the utmost rarity. Harris gives a census of only 27 copies, but we do not know how many survive. In the last 30 years, if a handful of copies in contemporary binding have appeared on the market (the present one; the Josefowitz copy which sold at Christie’s, 28 January 2014, lot 9 for $1,445,000; some in the trade), none has a contemporary provenance.
One of the 27 copies sold in the first four years, following the publication, with a contemporary Spanish provenance.
Blas Ametller y Rottlan was the pupil of two Spanish engraving masters: Pedro Pascual Moles y Manuel Salvador Carmona. He started his studies in the Escuela Gratuita de Dibujo dependiente de la Junta de Comercio de Cataluña and then joined the Real Academia de San Fernando, where Goya was also a student, in the 1780s.
In 1793, Ametller won the gold medal in the engraving contest for which he presented an engraving of a painting by Goya (fig. 1), owned at the time by the Academia: the portrait of the architect Don Ventura Rodriguez (fig. 2 - today at the National Museum of Stockholm). He then engraved other paintings by Goya, including the portrait of General Jose de Urrutia (figs 3 & 4 - today at the Museo del Prado) as well as portraits of his masters: Murillo, Velazquez and, of course, Goya himself. He was considered as one of the most preeminent engraving artists of his time.
Below his booklabel, the most important Spanish Prints collector of the nineteenth century, Jaime Andreu, wrote: "Comprado à los succeses de celebrissimo grabador D. Blas Amettler por mi. Jaime Andreu [Bought from the heirs of most famous engraver D. Blas Ametller, for me]”.
ADDITIONAL AUCTION RECORDS ACHIEVED FOR:
• Abraham Janssens, Domenico Cresti, Called Passignano, Jean-François de Sompsois
OLD MASTER DRAWINGS AUCTION RESULTS
Sotheby’s auction of Old Master Drawings totaled $4.5 million, surpassing the sale’s overall high estimate. The auction was led by two remarkable watercolors by J.M.W. Turner, both on offer from the direct descendants of Ralph Brocklebank – the scion of an important shipping family, who became chairman of Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. Appearing on the market for the first time in nearly 150 years, Switzerland: Possibly Lake Thun (estimate $150/250,000) and Switzerland: Lake Thun, looking towards the Nissen and Stockhorn (estimate $140/180,000) fetched $756,500 and $612,500 respectively – more than three times their high estimates.
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Lot 82. Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. (London 1775 - 1851), Switzerland: Possibly Lake Thun. Watercolor with pen and ink over traces of pencil, 250 by 364 mm; 9 7/8 by 14 1/4 in. Estimate $150,000-250,000. Lot sold $756,500. Photo Sotheby's
Provenance: Mrs Booth (1798-1875);
John Heugh;
with Agnew’s, Liverpool, by 1871,
by whom sold, 6 May 1871, to Ralph Brocklebank (1803-1892) of Childwall Hall, near Liverpool, £150,
his executor's sale, London, Christie's, 29 April 1893, lot 25 or 26; bt. Agnew's, on behalf of Canon Ralph Brocklebank (1840-1921) of Haughton Hall, Cheshire,
by direct family descent to the present owner
Exhibited: London, Guildhall, Loan Exhibition of Works by J.M.W. Turner R.A. and a Selection of Examples by some of his Contemporaries, April - July 1899, no. 142 (as an Italian Sketch)
Literature: Catalogue of the Loan Exhibition of Works by J.M.W. Turner, R.A. and a Selection of Examples by some of his Contemporaries, London 1899, p. 105 (as an Italian Sketch);
Sir W. Armstrong, Turner, London 1902 p. 259 (as an Italian landscape);
R. Radcliffe Carter, Pictures and Engravings at Haugthon Hall Tarporley in the Possession of RalphBrocklebank, London 1904, pp. xi, and 89, no. 80 (as an Italian lake scene);
C. Powell, ‘Turner and The Lake of Zug: Two Colour Sketches Rediscovered’, Turner Society News, Spring 2016, pp. 3-7, fig. 2 (as Sketch for Lake Zug showing the Rossberg over the lake);
to be included in Ian Warrell's forthcoming publication about Turner's late Swiss tours
Notes: This landscape and that of the following lot are remarkable watercolors that are not only full of spontaneity and energy but reveal Turner exploring nature through the media of light and color. As well as being works of great rarity, neither has been exhibited publicly since the late 19th century and they have remained within the same distinguished family collection since May 1871. Their arrival on the market today is therefore a truly exceptional event.
Both sheets date to the first half of the 1840s and see Turner returning to his beloved Switzerland. That country, described by one of Turner’s contemporaries as the ‘noblest of all earthly regions,’1 had enchanted him since his first visit in 1802 and it was to continue to act as a powerful magnet once he had reached his sixties.
Between 1841 and 1844 Turner made four extensive journeys to the heart of the Alps. Despite his advancing years, his enthusiasm for the spectacular scenery, the fresh air and the unique quality of light was unquenchable and during those summers, he continued to indulge in his lifelong passion for exploring Switzerland’s network of mountains and lakes. The drawings and watercolors that he produced while there and the work that resulted from these tours, are often considered to represent the very pinnacle of the artist’s achievement in the medium of watercolor.
Scholars’ opinions as to the exact topographical locations represented in the present two sheets have shifted over time. For many years they were regarded as Italian lake scenes. In the spring of 2016, Dr Cecilia Powell suggested they depicted Lake Zug and were connected with Turner’s The Lake of Zug: Early Morning, a ‘finished’ watercolor that is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.2 More recently still, Ian Warrell has provided evidence that identifies the views as depictions of the Lake Thun area, a theory that Dr Powell also accepts. Ian Warrell will be expanding his findings in his forthcoming book.
By the time Turner came to paint the present watercolors, he had developed an extraordinarily rapid and varied technique. This enabled him to capture the vast space he saw before him, not by virtue of solid boundaries so much as through the distinctive effects of light and color. As well as mountains, water and humanlife, he strove to capture the very ‘spirit of the place’3 and, in 1844, he went as far as to explain to Ruskin that ‘atmosphere is my style.’4 At first, Ruskin was unsure of Turner’s impressions from nature but, in time, he grew to thoroughly admire them, noting that he looked ‘upon them as, in some respects, more valuable than his finished drawings, or his oil pictures, because they are the simple records of his first impressions and first purpose, and in most instances as true to the character of the places they represent as they are admirable in composition.’5
The present two watercolors have a full and fascinating provenance. It seems that they were part of a group of works that can be traced back to Mrs Sophia Booth, Turner's devoted housekeeper and companion. They are subsequently recorded as being with John Heugh, a highly successful merchant with links to Manchester, who amassed a great collection of British 19thcentury art between circa 1845 and his death in 1878. Among the many highlights of his extensive collection were William Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat, Millais’s The Vale of Rest,6 and nine oil paintings by Turner.7
In 1871, Heugh consigned the watercolors to Agnew’s, Liverpool and on the 6th May the pair were acquired, for £300, by Ralph Brocklebank of Childwall Hall, near Liverpool.8 Brocklebank was the scion of an important shipping family and rose to become chairman of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. He owned a number of other Turner watercolors as well as works by the likes of Cox, De Wint, Copley Fielding and Landseer.9 Following his death in 1892, Brocklebank’s executors arranged for his collection to be sold at Christie’s in April of the following year. The two present works appeared as lots 25 and 26 and were acquired, through Agnew’s, by the deceased’s son, Ralph Brocklebank (1840-1921). He lived at Haughton Hall, Cheshire and was yet another major figure in the art world in his time. His particular interests lay with both the European Old Masters and the 19th century British school. On top of acquiring work by, amongst others, Cotman, Lewis, Martin and Ruskin, he also owned over twenty watercolors by Turner. These included Pembroke Castle, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806 and Lake Constance, one of the great Swiss landscapes from the 1840s (now at York Art Gallery). He also owned four Turner oil paintings, namely Somer hill, near Tunbridge, The Bright Stone of Honour (Ehrenbreitstein), The Grand Canal, Venice, and The Beacon Light.10 As well as being a great collector, he also, over his lifetime, lent over ninety works to major exhibitions in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. In 1899, he loaned Switzerland: Possibly Lake Thun (the present lot) to an important exhibition at London's Guildhall, along with four more of his works by Turner.
Although following his death in 1921 much of his collection was sold at Christie’s,11 the present works were not included in that sale and they have remained with his descendants until the present day. We are grateful to Ian Warrell, Dr Cecilia Powell and Peter Bower for their help when cataloguing these works.
1. I. Warrell, Through Switzerland with Turner, London 1995, p. 147
2. C. Powell, ‘Turner and The Lake of Zug: Two Colour Sketches Rediscovered’, Turner Society News, Spring 2016, pp. 3-7
3. A. Concannon in D. Blayney Brown, A. Concannon & S. Smiles, Late Turner – Painting Set Free, London 2014, p. 224
4. I. Warrell, Through Switzerland with Turner, London 1995, p. 61
5. E.T. Cook and A Wedderburn, The Works of John Ruskin, London 1904, vol. XII, p. 189
6. D.S. Macleod, Art and the Victorian middle class, money and the making of cultural identity, Cambridge 1996, p. 429
7. M. Butlin and E. Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, New Haven 1984, nos. 6, 46, 101, 237, 345, 350, 362, 533; 553
8. Agnew’s Stockbook (NGA27/1/2/4), nos. 696 and 697
9. Crichton Castle (Wilton, no. 1059), The Avalanche and Old Mill and Rocks
10. M. Butlin and E. Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, Yale 1984, nos. 116, 361, 368 and 474
11. London, Christie’s, 7 July 1922
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Lot 83. Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. (London 1775 - 1851), Switzerland: Lake Thun, looking towards the Nissen and Stockhorn. Watercolor over pencil, heightened with touches of bodycolor and scratching out, 247 by 363 mm; 9 7/8 by 14 3/8 in. Estimate $140,000 — 180,000. Lot sold $612,500. Photo Sotheby's
Provenance: Probably Mrs Booth (1798-1875);
John Heugh;
with Agnew’s, Liverpool, by 1871,
by whom sold, 6 May 1871, to Ralph Brocklebank (1803-1892) of Childwall Hall, near Liverpool, £150,
his executor's sale, London, Christie's, 29 April 1893, lot 25 or 26; bt. Agnew's, on behalf of Canon Ralph Brocklebank (1840-1921) of Haughton Hall, Cheshire,
by direct family descent to the present owner
Literature: Sir W. Armstrong, Turner, London, 1902, p. 259 (as Italian landscape);
R. Radcliffe Carter, Pictures and Engravings at Haughton Hall Tarporley in the Possession of RalphBrocklebank, London 1904, pp. xi and 89, no. 79 (as Italian lake scene);
C. Powell, ‘Turner and The Lake of Zug: Two Colour Sketches Rediscovered’, Turner Society News, Spring 2016, pp. 3-7, fig. 3 (as Sketch for the Lake of Zug showing the town of Arth and the Mythens in the distance);
to be included in Ian Warrell's forthcoming publication about Turner's late Swiss tours
Notes: This landscape and that of the previous lot are remarkable watercolors that are not only full of spontaneity and energy but reveal Turner exploring nature through the media of light and color. As well as being works of great rarity, neither has been exhibited publicly since the late 19th century and they have remained within the same distinguished family collection since May 1871. Their arrival on the market today is therefore a truly exceptional event.
Both sheets date to the first half of the 1840s and see Turner returning to his beloved Switzerland. That country, described by one of Turner’s contemporaries as the ‘noblest of all earthly regions,’1 had enchanted him since his first visit in 1802 and it was to continue to act as a powerful magnet once he had reached his sixties.
Between 1841 and 1844 Turner made four extensive journeys to the heart of the Alps. Despite his advancing years, his enthusiasm for the spectacular scenery, the fresh air and the unique quality of light was unquenchable and during those summers, he continued to indulge in his lifelong passion for exploring Switzerland’s network of mountains and lakes. The drawings and watercolors that he produced while there and the work that resulted from these tours, are often considered to represent the very pinnacle of the artist’s achievement in the medium of watercolor.
Scholars’ opinions as to the exact topographical locations represented in the present two sheets have shifted over time. For many years they were regarded as Italian lake scenes. In the spring of 2016, Dr Cecilia Powell suggested they depicted Lake Zug and were connected with Turner’s The Lake of Zug: Early Morning, a ‘finished’ watercolor that is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.2 More recently still, Ian Warrell has provided evidence that identifies the views as depictions of the Lake Thun area, a theory that Dr Powell also accepts. Ian Warrell will be expanding his findings in his forthcoming book.
By the time Turner came to paint the present watercolors, he had developed an extraordinarily rapid and varied technique. This enabled him to capture the vast space he saw before him, not by virtue of solid boundaries so much as through the distinctive effects of light and color. As well as mountains, water and humanlife, he strove to capture the very ‘spirit of the place’3 and, in 1844, he went as far as to explain to Ruskin that ‘atmosphere is my style.’4 At first, Ruskin was unsure of Turner’s impressions from nature but, in time, he grew to thoroughly admire them, noting that he looked ‘upon them as, in some respects, more valuable than his finished drawings, or his oil pictures, because they are the simple records of his first impressions and first purpose, and in most instances as true to the character of the places they represent as they are admirable in composition.’5
The present two watercolors have a full and fascinating provenance. It seems that they were part of a group of works that can be traced back to Mrs Sophia Booth, Turner's devoted housekeeper and companion. They are subsequently recorded as being with John Heugh, a highly successful merchant with links to Manchester, who amassed a great collection of British 19thcentury art between circa 1845 and his death in 1878. Among the many highlights of his extensive collection were William Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat, Millais’s The Vale of Rest,6 and nine oil paintings by Turner.7
In 1871, Heugh consigned the watercolors to Agnew’s, Liverpool and on the 6th May the pair were acquired, for £300, by Ralph Brocklebank of Childwall Hall, near Liverpool.8 Brocklebank was the scion of an important shipping family and rose to become chairman of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. He owned a number of other Turner watercolors as well as works by the likes of Cox, De Wint, Copley Fielding and Landseer.9 Following his death in 1892, Brocklebank’s executors arranged for his collection to be sold at Christie’s in April of the following year. The two present works appeared as lots 25 and 26 and were acquired, through Agnew’s, by the deceased’s son, Ralph Brocklebank (1840-1921). He lived at Haughton Hall, Cheshire and was yet another major figure in the art world in his time. His particular interests lay with both the European Old Masters and the 19th century British school. On top of acquiring work by, amongst others, Cotman, Lewis, Martin and Ruskin, he also owned over twenty watercolors by Turner. These included Pembroke Castle, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806 and Lake Constance, one of the great Swiss landscapes from the 1840s (now at York Art Gallery). He also owned four Turner oil paintings, namely Somer hill, near Tunbridge, The Bright Stone of Honour (Ehrenbreitstein), The Grand Canal, Venice, and The Beacon Light.10 As well as being a great collector, he also, over his lifetime, lent over ninety works to major exhibitions in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. In 1899, he loaned Switzerland: Possibly Lake Thun (lot 82) to an important exhibition at London's Guildhall, along with four more of his works by Turner.
Although following his death in 1921 much of his collection was sold at Christie’s,11 the present works were not included in that sale and they have remained with his descendants until the present day. We are grateful to Ian Warrell, Dr Cecilia Powell and Peter Bower for their help when cataloguing these works.
1. I. Warrell, Through Switzerland with Turner, London 1995, p. 147
2. C. Powell, ‘Turner and The Lake of Zug: Two Colour Sketches Rediscovered’, Turner Society News, Spring 2016, pp. 3-7
3. A. Concannon in D. Blayney Brown, A. Concannon & S. Smiles, Late Turner – Painting Set Free, London 2014, p. 224
4. I. Warrell, Through Switzerland with Turner, London 1995, p. 61
5. E.T. Cook and A Wedderburn, The Works of John Ruskin, London 1904, vol. XII, p. 189
6. D.S. Macleod, Art and the Victorian middle class, money and the making of cultural identity, Cambridge 1996, p. 429
7. M. Butlin and E. Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, New Haven 1984, nos. 6, 46, 101, 237, 345, 350, 362, 533; 553
8. Agnew’s Stockbook (NGA27/1/2/4), nos. 696 and 697
9. Crichton Castle (Wilton, no. 1059), The Avalanche and Old Mill and Rocks
10. M. Butlin and E. Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, Yale 1984, nos. 116, 361, 368 and 474
11. London, Christie’s, 7 July 1922
Gregory Rubinstein, Worldwide Head of Old Master & Early British Drawings, yesterday commented: “We are very pleased with today’s sale, which saw exceptional prices for a diversity of works spanning from the 16th through the 19th centuries. As always, high quality and freshness of material were primary drivers of our results. A global audience of private collectors, including those from America, Europe and the Middle East, vied for the opportunity to own works emerging from prominent private collections, such as the Forbes Collection and the Berger Educational Trust – both of which realized totals well above pre-sale expectations.”
Sotheby’s Masters Week sales continue in New York on Thursday, 26 January with the Master Paintings & 19th Century Art auction on Friday, 27 January
