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Lot 883
A FRENCH GILT BRONZE-MOUNTED GARNITURE DE CHEMINEE inset with plaques of platinum ground porcelain painted with coastal scenes in polychrome and red `jewelled` borders, the clock with ogee pediment and fluted pillars flanked by a pair of two handled oviform vases, on stepped square base, the circular movement with medallic backplate and striking on a bell, clock 30cm h, giltwood and maroon velvet plinths with ebonised bases and glass shades, c1870 In a fine state of preservation with some natural accretion of dirt and grime, the lacquer almost certainly original and in basically good condition, lacking one or two of the tiny red enamel jewels, the plinths and glass domes original with cords. A good example of the type
Lot 110
19th Century mahogany longcase clock case, the hood with swan neck pediment and tapered reeded columns, the trunk with shaped door having inlaid Masonic square and compass and urn within a serpent surround, flanked to either side with bell husk decoration and reeded split pillars, 241cm high.
Lot 131
19th Century French gilded spelter and porcelain cased mantel clock, urn shaped finial with lion mask decoration, porcelain dial with cherub and bird decoration and with Roman numerals flanked either side by conforming foliate panels and interspersed with caryatids, brass movement striking on a bell and enclosed by a door, 38cm high.
Lot 546
19th Century Grand Tour brass and mother-of-pearl counter bell standing on a circular alabaster base, 10cm high together with a similar ovoid shaped scent bottle case opening to reveal two glass bottles, 12cm high and a bronze paper knife, the handle formed as the stylised head of a bird, 25cm long.
Lot 651
Pair of 19th Century Sheffield plate vases, each having pierced ribbon and wreath decoration and standing on tapered pad supports united by a decorative platform, 13.5cm high together with a Sheffield plate hot water jug having a bell shaped dome cover and scroll handle and standing on a circular gadrooned foot, 27.5cm high.
Lot 521
A 19TH CENTURY MAHOGANY BRACKET CLOCK, the twin barrelled eight day movement striking the hour on a bell, with a silvered dial signed Henry Pace, London, strike/silent dial to the arch and engraved with foliate scrolls and pull, the Gothic inspired case with a trefoil top applied with a leaf spray flanked by steeple finials and cluster side columns, the sides with pierced brass sound frets, platform base, repeat cord to the base, together with a shaped and moulded bracket, the clock 40.5cms high, overall 75.5cms. See illustration
Lot 522
A LATE 19TH CENTURY FRENCH GILT METAL MANTEL CLOCK by Rollin, Paris of eight day movement striking on a bell, the circular white dial with Roman numerals and pierced hands, the case surmounted with a sailor boy, seated on a barrel, an anchor at his side, scroll and foliate cast case, 39cms high
Lot 698
William James Blacklock (1816-1858), an oil on canvas, "Blea Tarn and The Langdale Pikes". 17.5 ins x 23.25 ins, signed and dated 1854. . William James Blacklock 1816-1858THE LANGDALE PIKES ABOVE BLEA TARN1854It is no exaggeration to say that William James Blacklock is one of the great landscape painters of the nineteenth century, and perhaps the most remarkable of all of those who devoted themselves to the representation of the Lake District. He is less well known than he should be – the modern ‘rediscovery’ of the artist commenced in 1974 with an insightful article in Country Life by the late Geoffrey Grigson (‘A Painter of the Real Lakeland’, 4 July 1974, pp. 24-26), and was carried forward in a ground-breaking exhibition at Abbott Hall in Kendal, organised by Mary Burkett in 1981 – but on other occasions he has been omitted from landscape surveys, perhaps because of the very individuality of his work which makes them difficult immediately to characterise or readily to place in conjunction with those of his contemporaries. Nonetheless, Blacklock is a most fascinating and rewarding artist, who in the last half-decade or so of his tragically short life painted a small handful of masterpieces which serve as a testament to his deep love and knowledge of Cumberland and the English Lakes.The Blacklock family had been long established in the neighbourhood of Cumwhitton, to the south west of Carlisle, farming there at least since the 1500s. W.J. Blacklock’s father was in fact living in London, where he made his living as a bookseller and publisher, at the time of the painter’s birth, but returned to Cumberland in 1818. The younger Blacklock’s career as an artist commenced when he was apprenticed to the Carlisle engraver and lithographer Charles Thurnham, with whom he later collaborated on a series of prints showing the railway line between Newcastle and Carlisle. W.J. Blacklock enrolled for a period at the Carlisle Academy of Arts, prior to its closure in 1833, working under Matthew Ellis Nutter. In 1836 he returned to London, then aged twenty, living there for the following fourteen years. How he occupied himself at this stage is not known, nor is it clear whether he could rely on the sale of works for a livelihood. Works by him – generally showing north-country landscapes – were exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution. Clearly he gained some reputation on the metropolitan artistic scene, as his landscape paintings were commented upon enthusiastically by J.M.W. Turner, David Roberts and John Ruskin. Much concerning Blacklock’s career, and especially the question of his contact with other artists, is a matter of speculation. His name is largely absent from the diaries, correspondence and memoirs of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, the members of which were in any case much younger than him, but Blacklock would certainly have seen early works exhibited by members of the group and their associates. We know that he was in contact with William Bell Scott, headmaster of the Government School of Design in Newcastle, and who was in turn a close friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was almost certainly by Scott’s introduction or recommendation that Blacklock built up a circle of patrons in the North East. Scott and Rossetti may have hoped to meet Blacklock on the occasion of a walking tour they made together from Newcastle to Carlisle in June 1853. Scott, who like Rossetti was a poet as well as a painter, seems to have recorded a vain attempt to visit the painter in a poem entitled ‘An Artist’s Birthplace’, published in 1854. The verse describes the arrival of two men at the cottage home of a painter who may clearly be recognised as Blacklock: A fit place for an artist to be reared;Not a great Master whose vast unshared toils,Add to the riches of the world, rebuildGod’s house, and clothe with Prophets walls and roof,Defending cities as a pastime – suchWe have not! but the homelier heartier handThat gives us English landscapes year by year.There is his small ancestral home, so gay,With rosery and green wicket. We last metIn London: I’ve heard since he had returnedHomeward less sound in health than when he reached That athlete’s theatre, well termed the graveOf little reputations. Fresh againLet’s hope to find him.The verse corroborates what sparse biographical information we have for the painter (and which derives principally from an article in the Glasgow Evening News, 25 July 1900, entitled ‘An Artist’s Career’ and contributed by Edward Pennington presumably on the basis of information received from the artist’s family, despite forty-two years having passed since his death): the painter had returned to Cumberland because his health was deteriorating, probably as a result of syphilis, but also – according to Scott’s account – because of the professional frustrations and commercial pressures that went with trying to work as an artist in London. In 1850 Blacklock seems to have engaged in a last determined bout of activity as a landscape artist, perhaps fearing that he had not many years remaining to him and wanting to put together a group of works in which his particular artistic principles were to be defined. This small corpus – consisting of views in the Lakes and countryside around Cumwhitton, and all made in a period of about four years – serve as his lasting memorial. Paintings such as Devock Water (Abbott Hall, Kendal), of 1853, and Catsbells and Causey Pike (Tullie House Art Gallery, Carlisle), of 1854, represent timeless images of particular places which speak of the painter’s love for the landscape that he was representing. The present view is of the Langdale Pikes, seen beyond Blea Tarn, and therefore from a vantage-point looking towards the north west, and with the direction of afternoon light from behind the artist’s left shoulder. A shoreline of purple heather and strewn boulders forms the foreground, with a brown-coated fisherman on the left side. E. Lynn Linton, in his book The Lake Country (1864), used an engraving of the same view by W.J. Linton to head his chapter ‘Langdale and the Stake’, describing in his text the mountains seen from this vantage-point at ‘the back of Blea Tarn’: ‘the highest to the right is Harrison Stickle, that to the left Pike o’ Stickle, and the long sweep to the right of Harrison Stickle is Pavey Ark, in the cup or lip of which lies Stickle Tarn’. Harriet Martineau in her 1855 Complete Guide to the English Lakes invoked the place as the scene of one of Wordsworth’s Excursions to dwell upon the Solitary, and also described the remoteness of the location and the ‘very rough road [that] scrambles up from Langdale, by Wall End, to the upland vale where the single farmhouse is, and the tarn’.The atmospheric effect of the painting is beautifully observed, with the forms of the mountain partly suffused in shadow but with other areas brightly lit as cloud shadows sweep over, and with clefts and exposed rock faces recorded with painstaking attention. Blacklock’s particular mastery in the treatment of mountain landscapes depended in great part on his understanding of the constantly fluctuating quality of light, and here especially the scale and structure of the distant ranges are given volumetric expression by the graduated fall of light. Thus the mountain range seems both massive and distant, but at the same times almost tangible and lending itself to close and detailed scrutiny. Martineau commented on a similar optical ambiguity whereby ‘the Langdale Pikes, and their surrounding mountains seem, in some states of the atmosphere, to approach and overshadow the waters [of Windermere]; and in others to retire, and shroud themselves in cloud land’.Blacklock did not work directly from the motif but instead drew landscape sketches in watercolour which later formed the basis of his studio compositions, or perhaps worked largely from memory. He may in addition have used photographs – probably daguerreotypes which in the 1850s were beginning to be made available by commercial photographers – to remind himself of the broad outlines of his chosen subjects (as may be suggested by the way he treats shadows in his paintings, which sometimes seems reminiscent of photographic images). He did not seek the kind of literal transcription of the forms of the landscape that artists influenced by Ruskin attempted in the period, but sought a quintessential representation of topographical type which might be recognised as a timeless record of a hallowed place, treated with an extraordinary intensity of vision. The Langdale Pikes seem to have had a particular hold on the artist’s imagination, as he painted the range on a number of occasions and from different vantage-points. An earlier work showing Blea Tarn and the Langdale Pikes of 1852 is in the collection of a descendant of the artist, while a painting entitled Esthwaite Water and the Langdale Pikes (although in fact showing Elter Water) was commissioned by William Armstrong [later Lord Armstrong, the Newcastle industrialist and arms manufacturer whose house Cragside near Rothbury was built by the architect Richard Norman Shaw] in 1855. Clearly the Lakeland landscape was enormously important to Blacklock. All his exhibited works were of northern settings, and we may be sure that even during the years that he spent in London he will have made frequent visits to Cumberland, and that he believed himself to have as his essential purpose the representation of a beloved North. Analogy may be made between Blacklock and other European artists who like him felt it was their mission to explore and describe a landscape setting which they had known from earliest childhood, feeling such close personal identity with those places as to amount to obsession. His near contemporary Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) never tired of painting landscape and country life subjects set in Ornans in the Jura Mountains of eastern France, and created an extraordinary and indelible imagery of that region. Likewise, Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) painted series of views of the Mont Sainte-Victoire in his native Provence so as to capture the essential identity of a topography that was to him living and imbued with vital and personal associations. These were all painters for whom the intimate knowledge and long contemplation of a specific locality was a vital requirement for an art to be vital and true, and who found themselves in the representation of places with which they had long association, as if the landscape forms, light and air, which were the object of their art, retained some kind of subliminal resonance of the pattern of their own lives.Blacklock’s last extraordinary surge of creativity was sadly short lived. By the time the present work was painted, he was seriously afflicted by symptoms of the disease that would kill him. In the first place, he suffered from an inflammation of the eyes that would in due course make him partially blind. In November 1855, having become increasingly erratic in his patterns of behaviour, he was placed in the Crichton Royal Mental Institution in Dumfries, and where he died on 12 March 1858 as a result of ‘monomania of ambition and general paralysis’. Interestingly, the Crichton hospital, under the direction of Dr William Browne, had recently introduced therapies to attempt to aid their deranged inmates including drawing, as happened also at the Royal Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane in London during the time that Richard Dadd was incarcerated there, so Blacklock was able intermittently to continue at least to draw to the end of his life. A number of landscape sketches made at the Crichton are reproduced in Maureen Park’s book Art in Madness – Dr W.A.F. Browne’s Collection of Patient Art at Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, Dumfries, 2010.The Langdale Pikes above Blea Tarn was painted for the artists’ colourman Charles Roberson, probably to a commission and as a pendant to another work of 1854, The Miller’s Homestead (private collection). Whatever professional difficulties Blacklock may have faced in the years that he lived in London, in the 1850s, after his return to Cumwhitton he began to find himself sought after by a small but discriminating circle of patrons. Roberson himself was a significant figure in the establishment of a progressive school of painting in the middle years of the century, because he supplied artists with a range of new and stronger pigments, often derived in their manufacture from industrial processes, and thus aided the move towards more brightly coloured works which was a characteristic of English painting in the period. A degree of rivalry seems to have come about between Blacklock’s would-be patrons, chronicled in the letters that the artist wrote to the Gateshead metallurgist James Leathart (now held as part of the Leathart Papers, University of British Columbia). Roberson’s two paintings are referred to in a letter to Leathart of 2 June 1854, ‘one the same lake as I am going to do for Mr Armstrong – the other a Millers Homestead – the mill looking over a moor & distant hills they are for Mr Roberson the artists colourman’. In September 1855, just weeks before his final incarceration, Blacklock sent off the Lakeland views that he had made for Armstrong and Leathart, and in doing effectively concluded his professional career.Blacklock is an important and intriguing figure who may be regarded both as a pivot between the early nineteenth-century landscape school and the achievements of Romanticism, and the earnest and obsessive innovations of the Pre-Raphaelite landscape school. Perhaps a vital factor in our understanding and appreciation of the particular character of Blacklock’s art is his knowledge of historic schools of painting. Living in London in the late 1830s and 40s he would have had the opportunity to study the works in the National Gallery. It has been suggested that it was the unveiling of works long concealed under layers of discoloured varnish as a result of Charles Eastlake’s cleaning programme of in the mid-1840s that prompted Blacklock to adopt brighter and more luminous colours. A further possibility is that he made a European tour at some point, seeing for himself works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and also perhaps making contact with working artists in France or Italy. Only the slightest indication survives of Blacklock’s interest in the work of the Old Masters – in a letter to Leathart of 20 September 1854 he looks forward to hearing about the works of art that the latter had seen in the course of a Continental tour. Nonetheless, broad stylistic analogies may be drawn between the landscape paintings of Blacklock and those of other British artists who had visited Europe in their formative years. William Dyce, for example, who had visited Italy in 1825-26 and there made contact with the German Nazarene painters in Rome. Something of the clarity of light and simplicity of expression, along with a particular feeling for colour effects which are peaceful and never strident, that characterises Dyce’s pure landscapes, is also infused into the less well known works of Blacklock, and may perhaps likewise be indebted to a knowledge of European schools of painting.Christopher Newall
Lot 759
A William IV rosewood bracket clock by Whitehead Market Harboro, the arched case with applied foliate and scroll carved mouldings, with glazed door enclosing the 7.5 inch white painted dial with Roman numerals and two-train fusee movement with repeat mechanism striking on a bell. Width 14.5 ins, height 17.5 ins.
Lot 21
A late Victorian Doulton Lambeth stoneware rhyme jug, relief moulded with the Glasgow crest, "Glasgow Let Flourish" and printed with rhyme "This is The Bell that Never Rang, This is The Tree that Never grew, This is the Fish that Never Swam, This is the Bird that Never Flew". Height 7.75 ins.
Lot 351
A blue and white vase, 19th century, of ovoid form, painted with a cracked ice and prunus pattern, 23 cm; together with a blue and white and iron-red bowl painted with bats; a pair of celadon bowls; a pair of Canton bowls; two other bowls; a Canton enamel bell; a glass snuff bottle; a blanc-de-Chine head of Guanyin; and a silk embroidered cloth, (a.f.), (quantity).
Lot 1146
Mostly plated wares, comprising; a dinner bell with a beater, a rectangular small twin handled tray, a cocktail shaker, a shaped circular dish, a cigarette box, a quantity of table flatware, including; a fish slice, a cake knife and a pair of nutcrackers, a button hook, a faceted glass salad bowl, a faceted glass biscuit barrel, a twin handled trophy cup and a pewter spirit flask, with a funnel, in a box.
Lot 1275
A group of vertu and collectables, including; a spectacles case, a rectangular hinge lidded box, thimbles, mother of pearl counters, a filigree miniature evening bag, a pair of picture hooks, small brass weights, an Egyptian Mummy, miniature glassware, a powder compact, a caddy spoon, implements, a small brass bell, a miniature sofa and a chair and sundry.
Lot 98
Small, John William The castles and mansions of the Lothians. Edinburgh, 1883. Folio, 2 volumes, 103 photographic plates, original cloth gilt, some slight rubbing at edges; Blacklock, Tom Sketches in East Lothian. Edinburgh, 1892. Folio, 34 plates [including vignette title], original blue cloth gilt, rubbing, some bubbling to boards; Bell, J. Munro The castles of the Lothians. Edinburgh, 1893. 4to, frontispiece, 9 plates, original decorative cloth gilt, some discolouration to backstrip, and another copy rebacked with calf (5)
![Aldine poets The Aldine edition of the British poets. London: G. Bell, c.1876. 52 [of ?54] volumes, 12mo, maroon half morocco](http://lot-images.atgmedia.com/SR/10121/2798117/105-201081216533_468x382.jpg)
Lot 110
Bronte, Charlotte, Emily & Anne Poems by Currer, Ellis & Acton Bell. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1846. First edition, second issue, 8vo, errata slip, 1pp. of adverts at rear [undated], contemporary green cloth gilt, some fading to backstrip, inner hinge weak, 19th century ink inscription on front endpaper
Lot 1030
A mid-18th Century and later walnut longcase clock with eight day movement striking on a bell, the brass breakarch dial with moonphase indicator to arch above a chapter ring with Roman numerals framing a matt centre with subsidiary seconds and inscribed `Wm Dowell Swan, Margate`, cornered with pierced spandrels, the hood with moulded arch pediment above glazed door and turned columns, the arched top rectangular trunk door with inlaid chequer stringing on a similar base and plinth, height approx 231cm (restoration and alterations), together with weights and pendulum.
Lot 1040
A Regency mahogany bracket clock with eight day twin fusee movement striking on a bell, the painted dial with Roman numerals and inscribed `Brambles, Leeds`, the backplate inscribed `Bayles, London`, the Gothic arch case with applied mouldings flanked by gilt brass lion mask and ring handles and pierced fret panels, on a plinth base, height approx 42cm (faults).
Lot 1048
A mid-19th Century and later oak diminutive longcase clock with eight day movement striking on a bell, the brass break arch dial with silvered chapter ring beneath a silvered boss to arch inscribed `Henry Moore`, the arched hood with turned columns and glazed door, above a glazed trunk door on a panelled base and bracket feet, height approx 168cm, together with two weights, pendulum and winder (alterations and restoration).
Lot 1080
An early 19th Century Irish mahogany bracket clock with eight day twin fusee movement striking on a bell, the circular painted dial with Roman numerals and inscribed `Costigan, Dublin`, the domed case with brass inlay flanked by pierced fret panels, on brass bun feet, height approx 45cm, together with pendulum.
Lot 1104
A late 19th Century gilt metal mantel clock with eight day movement striking on a bell, the enamel dial inscribed `Hry Marc Paris`, the case with water fountain surmount flanked by a lady and gallant on a pierced scroll base inset with porcelain panels, back of case stamped `A. Adan`, height approx 30.5cm, with pendulum.
Lot 1105
A George III figured mahogany longcase clock with eight day movement striking on a bell, the brass break arch dial with strike/silent indicator to arch above a silvered chapter ring with Roman hours and Arabic minutes, framing a matt centre with subsidiary seconds, date aperture and applied plaque inscribed `StepN. Ganeron, London` all cornered by pierced gilt dolphin, urn and scroll spandrels, the arched hood with three brass ball and spire finials above a pair of fluted columns and glazed door, the arched trunk door above a plain base and bracket feet, height approx 236cm, together with pendulum and two brass weights (faults).
Lot 1130
A late 19th Century brass cased carriage alarm clock, with eight day movement striking on a bell, the circular enamel dial with Roman numerals and subsidiary alarm dial, the drum shaped case with swing handle above applied laurel wreath bands on strapwork and scroll supports, height approx 16cm (faults).
Lot 1143
A George III mahogany longcase clock with eight day movement striking on a bell, the painted break arch dial with Roman numerals, subsidiary seconds, date aperture and inscribed `Alex.r Duncan, Elgin`, the arched pediment above a glazed door, the trunk door with satinwood crossbanded borders flanked by fluted pilasters, on a crossbanded base with bracket feet, height approx 200cm, together with two weights and pendulum.
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