LONDON, ENGLAND.- Some of the earliest recorded works by Sir Joshua Reynolds and John Constable will be among the highlights to be offered in Sotheby’s sale of Important British Paintings on Thursday June 12, 2003. The sale will provide a broad overview of British painting from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and will include a range of works by some of Britain’s most celebrated artists, including Sir Peter Lely, Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Constable, Johann Zoffany, Joseph Mallord William Turner and Paul Sandby. Among a number of paintings and drawings by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) is one of the artist’s earliest surviving works. Estimated at £60,000-£80,000, the intimate chalk drawing (left) shows the young artist when he was only 17. Tentative and private, it is Reynolds’ earliest self-portrait, and it is also a very rare survival. Throughout his career, Reynolds was notoriously secretive about his working methods, and he was quick to destroy any preparatory sketches that might have shed light on his  practices. As a result, only a few drawings by Reynolds survive (those that do are now in major public collections) making this one of only a handful of drawings by him to have appeared on the market in recent times. Executed in 1740, the portrait was drawn at the beginning of Reynolds’ four-year apprenticeship with Thomas Hudson in London. His face is full of the youth and promise of a young man starting out in life and aware of his luck “in being under such a master, in such a family, in such a city and in such employment”.
The naivety of Reynolds’ self-portrait forms a strong contrast with the exuberance and confidence of his portrait of Mary Wordsworth, Lady Kent, painted some 37 years later. Estimated at £300,000-£500,000, this exceptionally beautiful study ranks among the artist’s most accomplished female portraits and comes to auction by descent through the family. Dressed in a sumptuous oriental-style gown, Lady Kent is shown seated in a relaxed, informal manner that mimics the low, cross-legged pose which contemporary travelers found so remarkable in the Turkish women they encountered. With its reference to the exotic dress and habits of far-away places, Reynolds’ portrait reflects a fascination with the East that was current in Europe at the time. Painted in 1777, the portrait springs from an extraordinary moment in Reynolds’ career when, in the period between 1776 and 1778, he produced some of his greatest masterpieces. His portraits of Omai (sold at Sotheby’s in London for a £10.3 million in November 2001), Master Crewe as Henry VIII and the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire all date from this period.
While Reynolds is widely celebrated for his portraits, his work as a caricaturist is little known. Painted in Rome in 1751, Portrait of Charles Turner, Sir William Lowther, Joseph Leeson and Monsieur Huet (est: £60,000-£80,000) is one of only eight recorded caricatures by the artist. Deftly capturing the pretensions and idiosyncracies of the characters it depicts (two British baronets, an Irish peer and their French tutor), the work provides a rare example of Reynolds’ skill in this field. Reynolds met the group during their travels through Italy on the fashionable Grand Tour, and his earthy representation of them forms a strong contrast with the grand portraits they would have commissioned from grand contemporary Italian artists like Pompeo Batoni, whose work is also represented in the sale.
The earliest portrait in the sale is a beautiful double portrait (right) by Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) showing two young boys, almost certainly from the Chesterfield family, and most probably Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield and his brother Charles, Baron Wotton. Philip Stanhope later proved to be an influential man, occupying various government posts in adult life. But he was at the same time a notorious rogue: he drank heavily, gambled his money, indulged in numerous affairs and was twice imprisoned in the Tower of London for involvement in duels and political intrigues. In order to shield his beautiful second wife, Lady Elizabeth Butler, from the advances of numerous suitors, Philip encouraged her to spend her time at Bretby Park, their seat in Derbyshire, and it was here that the portrait hung until Stanhope’s grandson, the famous 4th Earl of Chesterfield, moved it to Chesterfield House in London in the 1750s. It was subsequently moved to Highclere Castle in Hampshire from where it now comes to auction to be sold by direct descent. Painted in the early 1650s, the portrait ranks among Lely’s finest works. It is estimated at £400,000-£600,000.
Like his contemporary Thomas Gainsborough, Johann Zoffany was not only a consummate artist: he was also a talented musician, consorting with and painting some of the most important composers and instrumentalists of his time. Estimated at £150,000-£200,000, Zoffany’s characterful study of the cellist Giacomo Cervetto  is among the finest of these portraits and was exhibited in the Zoffany exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1997. An exuberant and extremely long-lived character (he lived till he was 101), Cervetto was one of the leading cellists of his age. Having moved from Venice to London in 1737, he took the London stage by storm, frequently performing solos in concerts at Vauxhall Gardens and Drury Lane, where his prominent nose earned him the nickname “Nosey”, and where he would amuse audiences with his mock-audacity and dry humor. (During one of David Garrick’s famous pregnant pauses at Drury Lane, he yawned so loudly that the audience – including the Royal Family – erupted with laughter. Quite unperturbed, he promptly assuaged Garrick’s annoyance with the wily excuse that it was “alvay the vay I go when I haf the great rapture. “)
Other portraits include one of the few works painted by Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) during her visit to Ireland in 1771. Estimated at £200,000-£300,000, Kauffmann’s conversation piece depicts Ireland’s leading 18th – century politician, Philip Tisdal, with his family.
In contrast to the delicacy of the topographical watercolors in the sale, a number of large, important and relatively formal oils present a more grandiose view of the English landscape at various moments in time. Estimated at £60,000-£80,000, an early river view by Jan Siberechts (1627-1703) fully demonstrates the qualities that made Siberechts the leading topographical artist of his day. Painted in 1698, Siberechts’ Extensive River Landscape with Drovers and their Cattle in the Foreground probably depicts a view in Derbyshire. Painted over a century later, a spectacular panorama by James Ward (1769-1859), View in Somersetshire from Fitzhead, (est: £200,000-£300,000) shows the estate where the great agricultural reformer Lord Somerville carried out so many improvements. Similarly striking, Robert Salmon’s view of the Liverpool, An English Vessel off the Liverpool Waterfront on the River Mersey, is estimated at £60,000-80,000. Painted in 1810, Salmon’s view shows the skyline of the city at the height of its affluence. Although Salmon was a local man (he was born in Whitehaven), he later moved to America, settling in Boston and establishing a successful career there.
Other landscapes include one of the earliest known oil paintings by John Constable (1776-1837). Painted in 1797, The Harvest Field (est: £50,000-£70,000), was executed soon after the Constable’s arrival in London, where he had been sent to learn the corn trade. Constable’s father’s ambitions for his son were soon thwarted, however, when, far from devoting himself to the business of milling, Constable abandoned himself to a new-found passion for the Dutch engravings which he saw in the homes of his London friends. Heavily influenced by these, The Harvest Field marks the aspiring artist’s first steps into the world in which he would subsequently achieve enormous fame.
Watercolours
At the core of the watercolors in the sale is a group of four important works by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851). Chief among these is Ingleborough from the Terrace of Hornby Castle, based on sketches drawn by Turner while traveling in Yorkshire in the summer of 1816. On his various trips to Yorkshire, Turner produced some 23 views of the area in preparation for Thomas Whitaker’s projected publication General History of the County of York. Although though the book never materialised, Turner’s preparatory sketches form a significant part of his oeuvre. John Ruskin, perhaps the best known and most reliable of Turner commentators, considered the present watercolour one of the finest of the series. Perfectly capturing the tranquility and morning stillness of the scene, it is estimated at £150,000-£200,000.
Turner’s Study of a Castle by a Lake of c.1824 (est: £40,000-£60,000) is a pure, almost abstract exploration of light and color, dating from a time when Turner was becoming increasingly interested in optics and color theory. Many of Turner’s works of this period demonstrate a new-found understanding of color that most probably sprang from his trip to Italy in 1819-20. The Italian light had an extremely liberating effect on him, and his watercolors of the time are notable for their exceptional luminosity. Turner’s interest in color and light was further explored on a second trip to Italy in 1828. His vivid view of the harbor of Genoa (est: £80,000-£120,000) dates from this trip and, with its exceptionally vivid colors, fully demonstrates the intensity of Turner’s response to the beauties of the Italian Riviera.
Turner’s trip to Italy was largely precipitated by his work on a series of watercolors commissioned for James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of Italy of 1818-20. Hakewill visited Italy in 1816, returning with over 300 sketches which were later transformed into watercolors by Turner and others and used as the basis for Hakewill’s Tour. Many of the watercolors prepared for the project are now in public collections, and Turner’s dramatic Rome from Monte Testaccio is therefore one of only a few examples still in private hands. It is estimated at £50,000-£70,000.
Commonly known as the “father of English watercolor”, Paul Sandby was one of the pioneers of the British topographical tradition. Born in Nottingham in 1730, Sandby moved to London with his brother Thomas in the early 1740s. In 1751, Thomas was appointed Ranger at Windsor Park, and Paul subsequently spent much of his time there, producing exceptionally fresh and immediate views that that give a sense of moments in time preserved. In View of Windsor Castle and Part of the Town and South East View of Windsor Castle from the Park, time is dramatically arrested, as horses fun freely and deer graze in the park, with every leaf and blade of grass around them carefully suggested with the deftest of brushstrokes. Both works come from the collection of Joseph Banks, the celebrated botanist who accompanied with Cook on his expedition on the Endeavour in 1768.
Like Banks, William Daniell and his uncle Thomas were intrepid travellers. When they entered Delhi in February 1789, they were the first professional British landscape artists to visit the city. Estimated at £50,000 - £70,000, William Daniell’s magnificent watercolour of the principal mosque there, the Jama Masjid, quickly captured the imagination of the public at home, and was later translated into print.
The sale will also include a number of important Victorian paintings by artists such as Dante Gabriel Rosetti, John William Waterhouse, Edward Lear and others (separate press release available). It will be held at Sotheby’s, New Bond Street, commencing at 10.30a.m. on Thursday, June 12, 2002, and will be followed later in the day by the British Sale, comprising a further selection of landscapes, portraits and watercolors.