This collection of paintings and drawings we have for sale from a sketchbook belonging to the artist Barry Pittar, RBA (c. 1878—1948) who was an accomplished watercolourist, architect, designer and ceramicist in London and Hertfordshire in the first half of the twentieth century.

Executed when Pittar was still very early in his career, these works show a refreshing eye for the interweaving of vivid colour, light and composition, or as The Times called his work in 1922, 'pleasant phantasies of light and shadow'.

Born in Kent in 1878, Pittar moved to London in the late years of the nineteenth century, to study art at the Royal College of Art and St. Johns Wood School, and for a brief period in Paris. Luck struck him quite early, and in 1895 he was appointed as Chief Architectural Artist for the Royal Doulton ceramic factory in Lambeth, where he worked until 1905.

The images in this collection date from around 1903-04, so these works show Pittar's explorations, in London and further afield, just before he decided to quit his ceramic work and move to becoming an independent artist. He set up a studio in London after this time and was successful for a number of years, exhibiting often at the Fine Art Society, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Royal Scottish Academy. Around the time he was awarded his RBA (1919-20), Pittar moved to Hogarth Studio, in an artist's colony in Bushey, Hertfordshire, where he set up a small pottery business. During the 1920s and 30s, Barry and his wife Edith produced a number of well known ceramic models of animals, including rabbits, dogs, seals and polar bears. Pittar also flourished in design work during this period—a draft of a GWR poster for the 'Cornish Riviera' still survives by his hand from around 1925—and shows a similarity in light and fluidity with a number of the drawings we have for sale in this collection. His works can be found in the V&A, the National Railway Museum, and the Ashmolean Museum of Art in Oxford.