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Lot 63
JOHN SELL COTMAN (1782-1842, BRITISH) “Carnarvon Castle circa 1802” watercolour, signed lower left 10 x 8 ins £2000-£3000 Provenance: The Hetherington Collection of English Drawings and Watercolours, Christie’s, Feb 14th 1978, Lot 12 £750 hammer Footnote: Keys Auctioneers are grateful to Timothy Wilcox for his comments on this work. Cotman made two tours of Wales, in 1800 and 1802; the first produced the Majestic Brecknock, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1801 along with Llantony Abbey, now in the Tate. In 1802 before embarking on the second tour, he exhibited Carnarvon Castle and a Grind Stone, near Harlech. Kitson, in his 1937 biography of Cotman (P39) says “neither of these drawings has been identified" but I would say there seems to me a very strong likelihood that this work is the 1802 exhibit. Cotman, throughout his career, was acutely aware of Turner, and I think the Carnarvon picture shows significant echoes of the Pembroke Castle Turner had exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1801. The inclusion of the shipping, and the way the bending masts set off the solid mass of the castle, features which give variety and contrast to Turner’s view, are magnified in Cotman’s. It is a measure of Cotman’s ambition at this very early stage of his career, that he would publicly challenge the artist universally acknowledge as the leader in the field, namely Turner, and try and outdo him. With his tighter vertical format and watery foreground, one might say Cotman succeeded. Cotman seems to have returned to the composition for one of his early soft-ground etchings, made around 1808-10, but not published until the 1830s as the Liber Studiorum. Although several of the working drawings for these liber subjects were exhibited by Cotman in Norwich in the years 1806-11, no version of Carnarvon was among them. There is one further view of Carnarvon, of which several versions are known, from later in Cotman’s career, dated 1825. Cotman had not returned to Wales in the interim, so the little fishing boat and the collection of quietly docked vessels in the 1825 version were presumably noted by Cotman on his original visit, but turned into something more dramatic for the purposes of his early exhibition picture.
Lot 311
A COLLECTION OF PRINTED EPHEMERA, includes a fold-out chromolithographic Valentine card circa 1905, a 1908 calendar etc. a pack of "Hard-a-Port cut plug "tobacco" playing cards with risque lady decoration, stereo photographic view cards, small illust rated childrens books, an album of postcards, a bone cased child's game, and a knapped stone arrowhead possibly early American
Lot 656
An 18ct half hunter pocket watch, fob chain and propelling pencil with blue enamel outer dial, a white enamel dial with subsidiary seconds dial black Roman numerals and blued steel hands, the back of the case is monogrammed, stamped 18k 755 throughout. Weight including mechanism 84.6gms, diameter of case 42mm. The bi-colour 9ct fancy chain is in both rose gold and white gold, weight 7.1gms, length 34.5cm, with an 18ct propelling pencil with a blood stone seal inlaid to the top carved with a 'C'. Weight 18gms
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400830 item(s)/page