Contemporary portrait of Dickens

58. [DICKENS, Charles:] Portrait of the author, attributed to James Sant, c. 1852.

A head and shoulders portrait, 48.5 x 59 cm. oil on canvas. Provenance: S. Wise (who sent a photograph of this painting to the National Portrait Gallery, 1930).

James Sant, R.A. (1820–1916) was from 1871 Queen Victoria ’s principal painter. His oeuvre also included the queen’s children and grandchildren, embassies, sentimental and religious pictures, and some aristocrats.

£ 38,000

67. LENKIEWICZ, Robert: portrait of Colin Wilson and his family. Oil on canvas, 192 x 196 cm., in an unvarnished wooden frame.

Colin Wilson, author of the classic work ‘The Outsider’. Robert Lenkiewicz (1941–2002), painter and voluminous collector of esoteric books.

See top of page; click here for larger image.

£ 17,000

80. SPARE, Austin Osman (1888–1956): portrait in coloured pencil on paper, of a reclining female nude, 87 cm. x 67 cm. In a contemporary wooden frame with gilt inner edge. Signed and dated 1934.

Spare left school at thirteen and was apprenticed at a stained glass factory while he attended evening classes at the Lambeth School of Art. He went on to win a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, Kensington, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1904. John Singer Sargent on one occasion hailed him a genius. He was initiated into witchcraft aged seven, and was later briefly associated with Aleister Crowley, but he developed his own mystical ideas, which were different to Crowley ’s black magic and crooked libertarianism. He believed in, and often painted ghosts. The late Sir Paul Getty, K.B.E., had Spare’s ‘Self-portrait with a dragon’ (1906) in his apartment in St. James’s Park, London (see Christie’s sale, Wednesday 24 October 2004 , lot 17), and there is a self-portrait by Spare from 1937 (Dennis Bardens (1911–2002), broadcaster, writer and friend of Spare – Thomas J. Symonds) in the National Portrait Gallery.

With an original photograph, 137 x 87mm., of Spare, c. 1950?, playing the clarinet.

£ 7,000

81. [STALIN, Josef:] Modern bronze casts of the death mask and hands of Stalin, respectively c. 38 x 2 cm. (the mask) and 21 cm. (hands).

A rare artefact, probably intended for an important Soviet recipient, the only other known bronze of Stalin’s face and hands at time of death is in the Stalin Museum in Gori , Georgia , Stalin’s birthplace. These bronzes are very likely copies of a set of original plaster casts, which are in the KGB Museum, Moscow, and believed to be the only such in existence.

POA

 

Oil Painting of the Battle of Trafalgar

82. [STANFIELD, Clarkson:] The Battle of Trafalgar. Painted after the original, commissioned by members of the United Services Club and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836.

Oil on canvas, 59 x 89 cm., in a contemporary or early grey and gilt wooden frame.

This picture shows the centre of the naval battle at 2.30 p.m. on 21 October 1805 (about 11/2 hours after the death of Nelson). The Victory, which has lost a mast and had her sails torn to shreds, is in the act of disengaging herself from a French ship (the Redoubtable) which is lashed alongside a British ship (the Temeraire), which in turn is taking a French ship (the Gougneux). On the left is Admiral Collingwood in his ship the Royal Sovereign, with a boat that he has taken as a prize, which has its rigging totally removed. Crew-members of the Temeraire are simultaneously boarding the Redoubtable while emptying heavy fire into the Gougneux. The signal flying at the top of the main mast of the Victory, appropriately, is ‘Engage the enemy more closely’.

*The painting came from the renowned Calvin Bullock collection, sold at Christie's, London , 1985.

£ 35,000

Original Drawing

85. WARHOL, Andy. The philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again). London , Cassell, 1975.

Octavo, pp. 241. FIRST EDITION Presentation copy Provenance; signed by author ‘To Ian [Reddington, “Tricky Dicky” in Eastenders]. Dog . . . Andy Warhol, London 1975’ With an original drawing of dog's head on the half-title, publisher's cloth, dust-jacket, with an unusual inscription in that Warhol has drawn a dog’s head, and not the familiar soup. A very fine copy.

Warhol on love, beauty, work, art and success, with piercing glimpses of the contemporary world and his own role in it, written with honesty and a lot of humour.

£ 3,000

home
catalogue index
rare books
manuscripts
autographs
works of art
contact