LONDON.- This October Bellmans' auctions are being held from 13th to 15th October 2025 and the Old Master, British & European Art Sale includes works by George Frederick Watts and Charles Napier Hemy from the famous Ionides Collection; a portrait of Ethel Eastman Johnson Conkling, the daughter of Eastman Johnson, who is often referred to as 'American Rembrandt'; as well as several paintings by Henry Scott Tuke, the famous 'Golden Goose' by Frederick Hall, a priced Sussex bred Ox by Tyddesley R. Davis and portraits by Henry Jamyn Brooks and works by the forgotten female sculptor, Marie-Louise Simard.

A rare and intimate family portrait by Eastman Johnson (1824–1906) (image at the top), one of America’s foremost 19th-century painters, is one of the other highlights of the auction. The portrait offered for sale is of Ethel Eastman Johnson Conkling (1870–1931), the daughter of Eastman Johnson. She married Alfred Ronalds Conkling in 1896 and, after Conkling died, she married again, to William H. Holden in 1922, settling abroad. Ethel was Eastman Johnson’s frequent model in his genre scenes of children but is seen here, in a formal portrait from circa 1895, a year before her first marriage. The portrait is estimated at £10,000 - £15,000.

Often referred to as “The American Rembrandt”, Eastman Johnson was celebrated for his ability to combine the influence of the Dutch Golden Age painters of the 17th century with a style based in realism and a deeply American sensibility. A co-founder of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, he is best known for his genre scenes of domestic life and the great American outdoors, such as The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, he also painted the Native American Ojibwe people, see Ojibwe Women, African-American subjects, see Negro Life in the South, and portraits of both everyday and prominent Americans, including Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Today, his works hang in major institutions such as The Met, The Smithsonian, and The National Gallery of Art, Washington. Two further works by the artist are being offered - a smaller portrait of the artist's father (est. £600 - £800) and a Canal Scene (est. £500 - £800). (separate press release available)

A selection of pictures by Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929) from one of the foremost private collections of his work are also included in this auction. An outstanding portrait of Gerald Caldwell Siordet (1885-1917), an artist, poet and decorated soldier, from 1914 - the watercolour is estimated at £1500 - £2500.



Siordet hailed from a prominent Huguenot family and Gerald was educated at Clifton College, where he won numerous Royal Drawing Society medals, before being awarded a scholarship to read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. Whilst at Oxford, he met fellow aspiring artist Brian Hatton (1887-1916) who studied at Trinity and painted Siordet’s portrait on a number of occasions. Having come down from Oxford, Siordet and Hatton shared a studio, known as The Bronze Door, on Cathcart Road in South Kensington. As well as Tuke, their artistic circle included Glyn Philpot, Gerald Spencer Pryce, the illustrator Henry Justice Ford and John Singer Sargent who drew a superb portrait of Siordet. He worked with the New English Art Club and it is likely that it was there that he met Tuke. Siordet was working for the Fine Art Society when war was declared in August 1914. He joined as a private soldier but was quickly promoted, he was awarded the Military Cross in 1916 and was wounded in the Somme. In January 1917, having recovered he was sent to Mesopotamia and, on 9th February, was killed whilst leading a successful attack on a Turkish position near Kut-al-Amara on the left bank of the Tigris River. His body was never recovered but his name is recorded on the Basra memorial, Iraq, The WWI memorial at Balliol, as well as the V&A memorial designed by Eric Gill. Following Siordet’s death, Glyn Philpot arranged for a volume of his poetry and drawings to be published privately for his sister Vera.

Other works by Tuke include the Wine Carriers, St. Tropez from 1926 (est. £3,000 - £5,000); a portrait of his sister Maria Tuke Sainsbury (est. £4,000 - £6,000) in which she is wearing a silk gown, which is now thought to be part of the collection at the V&A; The Burton Saddlery depicting a former home of one of Tuke's ancestors (est. £800 - £1,200) and Barques at Anchor in Falmouth (est. £1,000 - £2,000).

Another important painting coming up for auction is The Goose, by painter and poet Frederick Hall (1860 - 1948) and based on the famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The important Royal Academy exhibit by this British Impressionist and senior member of the Newlyn School of Art was painted in 1887 and exhibited at the RA the following year. It carries an estimate of £4,000 - £6,000.

The composition is based on the poem of the same name by Alfred Lord Tennyson which explores the myth of the goose that lays a golden egg. Written in 1842 against a backdrop of political unrest following the Reform Bill, Tennyson’s treatment is allegorical, exploring the long-term cost and consequence of unsustainable short-term gain. Hall painted two large oils, both exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888, based on particular verses in the poem; no. 619 based on verse four and the present work, no. 624, based on verse seven. Both were well received and critically acclaimed. The Goose was acquired by the great aunt of the present owner in 1933; still held in the original frame, with the verse in question hand-written by the artist on a label attached to the reverse, it returns to the market for the first time in over 90 years.
Also included in the auction is a remarkable piece of Sussex’s agricultural and artistic heritage - The Sussex Bred Ox by T R Davis (British, fl. 1825–1857). Painted in 1826 and signed by the artist, this oil on canvas (63.5 x 76 cm) offers more than a fine example of early 19th-century animal portraiture. It tells the story of a “wonderful Sussex bred ox”, a beast that became a local legend. Alongside the painting are the ox’s actual horns, adorned in silver and engraved with a plaque detailing his journey: bred by Mr Denman of Wilmington, fattened by the Duke of Richmond, exhibited at Chichester and Brighton, and finally slaughtered in 1826 at the age of seven, weighing an astonishing 271 stone 2 lbs. This evocative pairing of painting and horns makes the lot a unique record of rural life, farming pride, and the esteem in which Sussex cattle were held during the 19th century. Estimated at £2,000–£4,000, it offers collectors, historians, and lovers of the county’s heritage a rare opportunity to own a tangible piece of Sussex history.By the 1870s, their reputation had grown to such an extent that a formal society was founded to safeguard and promote the breed. On 18 November 1878, at The King’s Head in Horsham, breeders came together to establish The Sussex Herd Book Society (today known as the Sussex Cattle Society). The first volume of the Herd Book was published the following year, recording cattle bred from 1855 to 1875, a tradition that continues almost 150 years later. Though little is known about Tyddesley R. Davis, his works survive as valuable documents of rural Britain. Active between 1825 and 1857, Davis specialised in animal portraiture, capturing both the grandeur and individuality of livestock. In The Sussex Bred Ox, Davis’s attention to anatomical detail and stately composition underscores the prestige of prize cattle in early 19th-century society.

Last but not least, the auction includes two portraits by Henry Jamyn Brooks (1839-1925), estimated at £1,000 - £2,000 for the pair. They are of Renaissance Man Sir James Fortescue Flannery and his wife Lady Flannery. Sir James Fortescue Flannery had a remarkably varied career, working as an engineer, naval architect and later both a Liberal Unionist and Conservative politician. Born in Liverpool, the son of a captain who regularly sailed between Liverpool and Sydney, Flannery was educated at the Liverpool College of Science before attending Victoria University in Manchester. Following his graduation, Flannery worked as an apprentice at the Britannia engineering firm in Birkenhead, he furthered his experience under Sir Edward Reid who later became Chief Constructor for the Royal Navy. He then founded the marine engineering firm Flannery, Baggally & Johnson which would go on to hold offices in London, Liverpool and Rotterdam. He was appointed Justice of the Peace on two occasions, for Surrey in 1892 and for Kent in 1895 and first stood for parliament in 1895, winning the seat of Shipley, West Yorkshire, which he held until the 1906 general election. By the 1910 election he had joined the Conservative party and returned to parliament as MP for Maldon in Essex, a seat which he retained in the 1923 election. Flannery was knighted in 1899 and created 1st Baronet of Wethersfield Manor, Essex in 1904. Their daughter Enid married 2nd Lt. David Crawford Moore Lindsay, grandparents of the present owners.

Henry Jamyn Brooks was a London-based portrait painter who recorded a number of highly significant events during his career. In 1888 he painted ‘The Private View of the Old Masters Exhibition at the Royal Academy’, featuring no less than sixty-six people including such luminaries as Millais, Holman Hunt, Alma-Tadema, Burne-Jones as well as Alfred de Rothschild and Prime Minister William Gladstone. Brooks also included critic John Ruskin even though he did not attend the event and the finished work was donated to the National Portrait Gallery in 1919.



On the 14th October, Bellmans can also offer two works by a forgotten sculptor as part of the Works of Art auction. Marie-Louise Simard (1886-1963) is a fine example of a relatively unknown and poorly documented French sculptor whose elegant Art Deco bronzes, especially female figures, dancers, and stylised animals can command interest in the decorative-arts market, especially in this anniversary year. Female sculptors such as Simard have proven even more difficult to find documentation and contemporary reference of, leaving Simard, and many others, relatively unknown despite producing striking and skilled work. They appear solely in auction records and dealer inventories, but are rarely found in museums. Bellmans can offer an Art Deco bronze figure of a Female Dancer with Bird (est. £300 - £500) as well as an Art Deco part silvered bronze model the Trojan Horse (est. £2,000 - £3,000).

We do know that Simard was born in Paris in 1886 and is recorded as having died in 1963. From 1927 Simard is recorded as having exhibited at Paris salons: notably the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des Indépendants. Biographical notes that accompany several auction and dealer listings state that she spent formative years in Monaco, where she learned the rudiments of carving from a local stonecutter; beyond that early apprenticeship she appears to have been largely self-taught. This combination of hands-on training and independent development helps explain the practised yet decorative sensibility of her later bronzes.