Karl Parsons

Head of a Young Woman

1907

Edwin Long 1829 - 1891 Portrait Studies Graphite on paper Image size: 4 x 8 inches (10 x 20.5 cm) Framed Edwin Longsden Long RA (1829-1891, British) wa...

Red chalk and graphite over paper Image size: 19 x 13 1/2 inches (48.25 x 34.25 cm) Contemporary style frame The name Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood referred to the groups’ opposition t...

Graphite on paper, signed bottom right Image size: 13 x 8 3/4 inches (33 x 22.25 cm) Original frame Dora Thacher Clarke, later Dora Middleton, (1895–1989) was a British sculptor and wood carver who also wrote about, and promoted African art. Clarke was born in Harrow in Middlesex. Her father, Joseph Thacher Clarke was an American architect. Clarke won a scholarship that allowed her to attend the Slade School of Fine Art. Aged fifteen, Clarke initially studied at the Slade on a part-time basis for three days each week throughout 1910 and 1911 but during 1915 and 1916 she studied sculpture there as a full-time student. Clarke first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1923 and continued to do so until 1959. In the early 1930s she was a regular exhibitor in group shows at the Goupil Gallery and in March 1937 had her first solo show at the French Gallery. She also exhibited at the Paris Salon and with the Royal Society of British Artists. Clarke's works included bronze castings, memorials and wood sculptures, often of African heads. For example she was commissioned to sculpt the posthumous portrait bust of Sir Walter Morley Fletcher. The most notable of her memorials is the panel and medallion tribute to Joseph Conrad at Bishopsbourne in Kent, which was unveiled in 1927. Clarke also wrote about, and promoted African art and spent a year, between 1927 and 1928 in Kenya, where she made many drawings which when she returned to London she used as the basis for wood carvings and bronzes of tribal figures. Wood carving became her technique of choice, often working with hardwoods and, on occasion, sperm whale teeth. Clarke married Admiral Gervase B Middleton in 1938 but rarely exhibited work under her married name. During World War II, Clarke was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to produce a portrait medallion depicting a serviceman who had been awarded the George Cross. This proved to be the only portrait medallion acquired for the WAAC collection. Sculptures by Clarke are held in various museums, including the Ashmolean Museum which also holds a 1936 portrait of her by Orovida Camille Pissarro.

Graphite on paper Image size: 5 1/2 x 20 1/2 inches (14 x 52 cm) Framed This sketch is a portrait of Thomas Gotch is by his lifelong friend and confidante, Jane Ross, whom he met at...

Frank Jameson 1899 - 1968 Self Portrait Graphite on paper, signed lower right Image size: 15 x 9 inches Contemporary frame Frank Jameson was born in London and later moved to Birmingham where he attended evening classes in drawing and painting at Birmingham Art School. By day he worked as an insurance salesman. During the First World War he became an officer in the Worcester Regiment and was in charge of building bridges and block houses. He returned to the Midlands but then travelled widely by rail, eventually discovering St Ives where he was inspired by the stunning scenery. He stayed and rented the Loft Studio. He also became a member of the St Ives Society of Artists and exhibited frequently with his fellow artists, especially John Park...

Graphite and coloured pencil on paper Image size: 4 x 5 inches (10 x 12.75 cm) Period frame

Signed and inscribed on a label on the verso: No. 1/ The Argument/ W. Cave Thomas/ 203 Camden Rd/ NW Provenance: Christie’s, London, 6 November 1995, lot 88. Private Collection, London. This powerful watercolor is a mature work by the little-known Victorian painter William Cave Thomas...

This beautiful Victorian pencil drawing dates to around 1890 and is by an unknown hand. It is a profile head and shoulders portrait of a young lady sat in a chair. Her dark hair is t...

This is a fine detailed and superbly executed Edwardian drawing by Estella Canziani which dates to circa 1911. Executed by one of the leading artists of the day it is a very strikin...

Pioneering English Female Illustrator Helen Stratton masterfully renders in pen and ink a scene from "The Little Mermaid" in George Newnes's 1899 editi...

MAXWELL ARMFIELD, RWS. (1882-1972) Siegfried Signed, inscribed and dated l.c.: MAXWELL ARMFIELD/MDCCCCIV [1904] PARIS;SIEGFRIED/ACT III Pencil and watercolour Framed 24 by 16 cm., 9 ½ by 6 ¼ in. (frame size 42.5 by 34.5 cm., 16 ¾ by 13 ½ in.) Provenance: Fine Art Society, London, 1979. Born at Ringwood, Hampshire, of Quaker parents, his father being a milling engineer, Armfield studied at the Birmingham School of Art under Arthur Gaskin and Joseph Southall who taught him the tempera technique he was to practice for the rest of his life. In September 1902, after visiting Italy at the suggestion of Gaskin, he went to Paris, enrolling at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and sharing a studio with three other students – Norman Wilkinson (also from Birmingham), Keith Henderson and the sculptor Gaston Lachaise. Returning to London the following year, he embarked on the series of one-man exhibitions that were henceforth to mark his career, showing first at Robert Ross...

Alice Mary Chambers. English ( b.1855 - d.1920 ). Portrait of Rebecca Porter Paddon 1850 – 1915 (nee Somerset) Red Chalk on Paper Signed with monogram upper left. Image size 17.9 inches x 14.8 inches ( 45.5cm x 37.5cm ). Frame size 25 inches x 21.9 inches ( 63.5cm x 55.5cm ). Available for sale; this original sanguine red chalk portrait drawing on paper is by the English female artist Alice Mary Chambers and dates from around 1880 to 1885. The drawing is presented and supplied in a glazed frame dating from the 1990s which uses a backboard and mount from the 1960s (which is shown in these photographs). This antique drawing is in very good condition. It is supplied ready to hang and display. The drawing is signed with the artist’s monogram upper left. Provenance: By descent through the sitter’s family. Alice Mary Chambers was a fascinating and significant figure in British artistic circles, and part of the higher echelons of the ‘aesthetic’ phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement of the late nineteenth century. A contemporary of Evelyn De Morgan, Kate Bounce and Marianne Stokes, she was also a close friend of Charles Augustus Howell through whom she met Algernon Swinburne, Whistler and Dante Gabrielle Rossetti. The influence of Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt and E.R. Hughes can also be seen in her highly acclaimed red chalk studies and watercolour works. Alice was born in Harlow, Essex, in 1855, the daughter of the Rev John Charles Chambers, a controversial figure in the Anglican Church, and his wife, Mary. Their two older children had both died in infancy in 1852. At the time of her birth, Alice’s father was vicar of St Mary Magdalene in Harlow, but in 1856 he became perpetual curate of St. Mary’s, Crown Street, and warden of the House of Charity, both in Soho, London, and he retained these positions until his death. He has been described as turning St Mary’s into a model for managing a parish along ritualist (Anglo-Catholic) lines. By consent, he and his wife separated ‘each to live crypto-monastic lives of celibacy and charity’. Census records show that in 1861 Alice and her mother were living at Fernley Bank, West Hill, Sydenham, a school for young ladies run by her mother’s sisters, Sarah, Martha and Ann, and at which her mother also taught. By 1871 Alice and her mother were again living with her father, in Bloomsbury. However, within the next three years, both her parents died. In his will her father made his brother, who was vicar of Hook in Yorkshire, guardian of Alice and left the income from a substantial sum for her maintenance and education. It appears this enabled her to complete her studies. Alice had emerged as an artist by 1875, when she produced her earliest dated work. She exhibited at the Royal Academy (9 works), and the New Watercolour Society and the New Gallery, London between 1881-1894. She specialised in drawings of female figures and mythological and orientalist subjects. She also provided frontispiece illustration for Mary Hullah’s The Lion Battalion (1885), a collection of stories for children. Chambers signed her work with a monogram which is reminiscent of Rossetti’s, and often used a leafy backdrop. By 1881 Chambers had established a close relationship with the artists’ agent, Charles Augustus Howell, who is considered one of the most colourful characters of the Victorian age. Howell was the friend and agent of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and later secretary to John Ruskin. He had a mixed reputation during his lifetime, as both a ‘gifted raconteur’ and a ‘prodigious liar’. Chambers became a member of a close circle around Howell, that also included his wife, Kitty, and his mistresses, the artist Rosa Corder and Clara Vaughan. It has been suggested that Chambers was the third of these mistresses, though she somehow managed to retain her respectability. Chambers was at her most artistically productive during the years of her friendship with Howell and his circle, benefitting from the support of a like-minded community. By 1881 she was living at 17 Red Lion Square, an address with significant Pre-Raphaelite associations – and described herself an “artist in drawing and painting’. Previous lodgers at 17 Red Lion Square included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, W.H.Deverall, and Edward Burne-Jones. It was also the premises at which (William) Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co established their first headquarters. When Howell died in 1890, he and Chambers were living at the same address in Southampton Row, and possibly in a ménage with Rosa Corder. Chambers was obviously a most trusted friend as she was named as one of the two executors and trustees of his will, along with the auctioneer, Frederick John Bonham, and as one of the two guardians of his daughter by Kitty, along with Corder. It was Chambers who made the arrangements for Howell’s funeral and the sale of his estate. Following Howell’s death and through the 1890s Chambers appears to have led a peripatetic life and spent much of her time in France and Spain In 1901 she was living at 15 Ann’s Villas, in West London, and described herself in the census at living on her own means, rather than as an artist. From that time, she retained one or more addresses in London, but spent most of her time in a cottage in Sussex, or abroad in Italy or Spain. In 1913 Chambers donated Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s plaster death mask to the National Portrait Gallery. Alice Chambers died at Pomona House, Fulham on 5 May 1920. © Big Sky Fine Art There is a tantalizing link between the artist and the sitter of this drawing; they were both remarkable women in their time, with only five years between them in age, and they had the same lifespan of 65 years. They would have mixed in similar social circles and from what is known of their individual lives it is easy to imagine that they would have admired and respected each other. They obviously spent time together when Rebecca sat for her portrait. From the appearance of the subject, it can be reasonably estimated that the picture was created around 1880-85, when the artist would have been around 25-30 and the subject around 30-35. There are two likely circumstances in which this picture may have been commissioned. The first is the occasion of the marriage of Rebecca to her second husband, art collector Samuel Paddon, in 1879. In this scenario, this would have been a romantic gesture, to capture the beauty of the bride. The second scenario is a more pragmatic one; in 1885, six years after marrying Rebecca, Samuel Paddon sued the infamous artist’s agent Charles Augustus Howell. As a close friend, and possibly lover of Howell, Chambers provided promissory notes to help settle the claim. So, this portrait may have been undertaken as part of that settlement. Whatever the circumstances of its creation, this drawing demonstrates the extraordinary skill of one enlightened young woman by capturing the spirit of another. © Big Sky Fine Art This truly beautiful original red chalk drawing on paper by Alice Mary Chambers (1855-1920) is a half-length portrait of Rebecca Porter Paddon, nee Somerset, (1850-1915). It is signed with the artist’s usual monogram in the upper left section. Chambers was well-known for her red chalk studies, and this is a very fine example of her work. The beautiful young woman who is the subject of this drawing is Rebecca Porter Somerset Paddon and her own story merits telling too: Rebecca was born at Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire in 1850, the daughter of Edmund Thomas Somerset and Mary Ann Somerset. She married Charles John Paddison on 24 June 1874, but three years later she filed for divorce on the grounds of his cruelty and adultery. She also sought custody of their son, born in 1875. The divorce became final in 1879. Until the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act it was essentially impossible to obtain a divorce without the passage of a private Act through Parliament. Even after 1857 divorce was extremely rare in England, and for a woman to divorce her husband was virtually unheard off. The fact that Rebecca was courageous enough to initiate and see this process through speaks volumes of her character. Two years after her divorce Rebecca married again, on 17 May 1879. Her second husband, Samuel Wreford Paddon was a diamond merchant and art collector. They went on to have three children together ; Eva, Stanley and Philip. Samuel Paddon was an associate of Charles Augustus Howell, and through him was introduced to Whistler. At this time the Paddons were living in Reigate, Surrey. Rebecca is known to have liked pastel drawings, and bought one from Whistler, possibly from the Venice Pastels exhibition of 1881. During the 1880s the Paddons lived at 55 Earls Court Square, London. Samuel Paddon eventually fell out with Howell over some black Chinese ware...