LONDON, ENGLAND.- Portraits abound in June with an auction devoted to Important British Paintings at Sotheby’s in London on Thursday, June 13, 2002. Great British artists including Gainsborough, Stubbs, Constable, Reynolds and Turner vie for top billing alongside Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Millais. Estimates will range from £20,000 to £3million.



A full-length portrait by Thomas Gainsborough, (1727-1788) showing Colonel John Bullock (1731-1809) leads the sale and is estimated at £2-3 million. The magnificent full length portrait dates from the early 1770s. , towards the end of the artist’s stay in Bath. These full length portraits painted in Bath (which include ‘The Blue Boy’) were described by Sir Ellis Waterhouse as ‘perhaps his finest and most original achievements’. The sitter, depicted standing wearing the uniform of the East Essex Militia and leaning on a pedestal with a black and white dog by his side, was the son of Josiah Bullock. The family originally came from Berkshire, but their connections with Essex stretched back to the 16th century. From the 17th century the Bullocks lived at Faulkbourne Hall, a beautiful Tudor house in Witham between Chelmsford and Colchester. Bullock entered politics and was an MP for over 50 years, representing Malden from 1754 to 1774. John Bullock’s decision to commission this portrait may have been influenced by his kinsman, the Duke of Bedford, who was an important patron to Gainsborough.



Two beautiful views of London and the Thames, painted in oil on copper, by Antonio Joli (c.1700-77) shortly after he arrived in London c.1745 give a fascinating insight into the city through their wealth of topographical detail. Estimated to realise between £200,000-300,000, Joli - like his direct contemporary Canaletto, who arrived in London in 1746 - has introduced a striking and Italianate colouring to the London skyline. The first picture illustrates The Thames Looking Towards the City with St. Paul’s Cathedral (completed in 1710) as the focus and around it are clustered a myriad of church towers including St. Martin’s, Ludgate Hill and St. Mary-Le-Bow. To the right of the picture stand London Bridge, which at over 600 years old when this picture was painted, is one of the only links to London prior to the Great Fire in 1666. By 1746 the future of the bridge was under discussion and ten years later the houses on it removed and the road widened.



The second picture by Joli, The Thames Looking Towards Westminster, is of particular interest as it shows Charles Labelye’s new Westminster Bridge under construction. By the time Canaletto arrived it was almost completed. Joli’s painting shows the bridge with only a few arches complete, a city barge in the foreground with St. John’s Church on the left, Westminster Hall, Dorset Court and St. Margaret’s Westminster with Westminster Abbey dominating the whole composition.



Two Mares and a Pony in a River Landscape was one of ten paintings by George Stubbs (1724-1806) commissioned by Thomas Villiers, 2nd Earl of Clarendon and was painted in 1793 (Est: £100,000-200,000). They hung at The Grove, a medieval manor and seat of the Clarendon family in Watford, until they were sold in 1920. Villiers, an enthusiastic sportsman and founder member of the Hertfordshire Hunt in 1820, enlarged the parkland and filled it with a profusion of animals which George Stubbs clearly enjoyed to visit and paint there. Even at the age of 79 he was known to walk the 16 miles from his home to The Grove.



The imposing Portrait of George Townshend, Lord Ferrers (1755-1811), painted in 1773 by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was exhibited at the Royal Academy two years later and is expected to realise between £800,000 to £1.2 million. The young George Townshend is depicted standing full-length and wearing the uniform of the 15th Kings Light Dragoons with a skirmish beyond. By the time this portrait was painted the Townshend family were already important patrons of Reynolds. From the same period is a beautiful portrait entitled Mrs Morrison by Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) estimated at £100,000 to £150,000. In 1759 Horace Walpole wrote a letter extolling the virtues of Reynolds and Ramsay, but added “Mr. Reynolds seldom succeeds in women: Mr Ramsay is forced to paint them”.



Estimated at £50,000 to £80,000, Ladies from the Family of Mr. William Mason of Colchester is a rare conversation piece by the major English landscape painter of the 19th Century, John Constable (1776-1837). Painted circa 1806, the painting, still in its original frame, depicts four ladies and their dog and through an open window, a distant view of a church. Originally the painting was listed as The Four Daughters of Mr. Mason and has only once been previously recorded in 1937, in an extended “Memoirs of the Life of John Constable”. However, the Mason family believe the figure on the right may be Mary Constable, sister to the artist the lady the three girl’s mother. Family tradition relates that the painting was executed as a settlement of a debt to the girl’s father William Mason (1768-1840). Mason was a prominent solicitor of Colchester serving for about 20 years as a clerk to the Colchester magistrates and in 1792 married Constable’s cousin Anne Parmenter. The other girls featured include Jane Anne Mason (1792-1876), later Mrs Inglis and the youngest girl who became Mrs Simpson of Hadleigh, Suffolk and who owned the painting, passing it down through the family.



Sunrise, Venice from the Punta della Dogana by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) is typical of Turner’s late watercolours of Venice. Estimated at £150,000 to £200,000 the view is taken from the Punta Della Dogana looking down the Grand Canal with the Duccal Palace and the campanile of St. Mark’s Square on the left. The watercolour originates from a roll sketchbook that is now part of the Turner Bequest.



A stunning painting of a malevolent fairy by George Frederick Watts (1817-1904), entitled Fata Morgana was painted in 1865 and is estimated at £250,000 to £350,000. Fata Morgana was the Queen of Avalon and half-sister to Arthur. Watt’s illustrates her dancing and singing songs of beguilement to Orlando who gazes on in mutual admiration. Started in 1865 and completed in 1870, it was the second time Watts painted the subject and he showed it at the Royal Academy that year. Fata Morgana has been in private hands since the 1960s and has been included in exhibitions in at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Royal Academy, London.



Freedom by Sir Walter Crane (1845-1915) was first exhibited at The Grosvenor Gallery in 1885, now part of Sotheby’s premises and was inspired by Verse X of Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poem ‘The Eve of Revolution’ (Est: £100,000-200,000). A Czech collector named Emile Salus, who started amassing pictures after the sale of his cutlery factory in Prague, was the original owner of the painting which not only survived the crippling Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, but the ensuing Communist regime. In March 1939, the Nazis invaded and Salus moved his beloved collection for safety to Zlin some 300 kms from Prague. He tried to sell his collection to raise money to help his flight, but the Museum director of the Bat’a Gallery refused to buy them for fear of what might happen if the Gestapo discovered he had helped a Jew to escape, however he did agree to store the works. Eventually Salus managed to escape to Palestine, but in 1946 returned and asked the gallery to restore his collection. The gallery were unwilling and tried to buy the pictures from Salus, but before this could be settled the Communists came to power in February 1948 and immediately imposed a “Millionaire’s Tax” on the value of the paintings, confiscating them until he could settle the tax bill. In December 1952 Emile Salus died, before the seizure could be ratified and the collection passed to his niece. Finally in 2001 the Bat’a Gallery returned Freedom to the family after a nine year legal battle.



Dante Gabriel Charles Rossetti (1828-1882) painted the portrait tondo of Fanny Cornforth, his housekeeper and mistress in 1862 (Est: £120,000-180,000). Fanny Cornforth’s real name was Sarah Cox and she was said to have fallen into conversation with Rossetti in August 1856 whilst he, Edward Burne- Jones, Cornell Price and Ford Maddox Brown were walking in the Royal Surrey Pleasure Gardens, Lambeth. The following day she visited Rossetti’s studio and began to sit for the artist.



Rossetti painted Fanny Cornforth numerous times in the late 1850s and 1860s. In 1860 he married Lizzie Siddal, but in 1862 tragedy struck and Lizzie died of coral poisoning (possibly suicide). The distraught Rossetti placed the manuscripts of his poems in her coffin. In October 1862 he moved to a grand 17th century house on the Chelsea waterfront – Tudor House, Cheyne Walk – and Fanny joined him to work as his housekeeper. This irregular cohabitation was much commented upon at the time and generally disapproved of.



Three Female Figures, Dancing and Playing is a beautiful gouache drawing of three girls in flowing draperies by fellow Pre-Raphaelite artist, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898). Estimated at £25,000 to £35,000, the drawing was given by Burne-Jones to Frederic Leighton and is believed to have been drawn in the 1890s.



An important portrait from this era depicts The Honorable John Neville Manners painted by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) and estimated at £250,000-350,000. Millais was one of the most distinguished British portraitists of the late Victorian period, painting images of great men and women of the age including Thomas Carlyle, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, but was also extremely adept at portraying children. This portrait shows the Hon. John Neville Manners, aged four, in 1896, but sporting the trappings of the early 19th century and invites comparison with Sir Thomas Lawrence’s Master Lambton of 1825. The young aristocrat wears a red velvet suit trimmed with a white lace collar and white stockings, but a reference to the boyish pastimes of the late Victorian period is introduced in the racket and shuttlecock the boy holds.