From the Blog

News, stories and musings from the eclectic world of S&W.

Between-the-Wars Portrait

Between-the-Wars Portrait

Agnes Clara Tatham (1893–1972) excelled at portraiture, depicting female sitters in particular, characteristically painting in a restrained palette with a consciousness of colour, pattern and form
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A Taste of Things to Come!

A Taste of Things to Come!

I'm not a parent of teenagers yet, but this still made me chuckle
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Happy New Year

Happy New Year

As the sun sets on 2024, we wish all our wonderful customers all the very best for 2025
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A Beautiful Bacchante

A Beautiful Bacchante

With the temptations of Bacchus all around, I'm trying to remain serene as this beautiful Neoclassical bacchante!
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India Calling

India Calling

We have listed some gorgeous 19th-century Indian pictures today
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Paul the Apostle

Paul the Apostle

Delighting us this week is this superbly painted biblical scene by Richard Westall RA (1769–1836)
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Monastery of Saint Benedict near Subiaco, Rome

Monastery of Saint Benedict near Subiaco, Rome

This exquisite watercolour painted in 1835 by the German artist Carl Ludwig Rundt (1802–1868) depicts the decorated interior at the Monastery of Saint Benedict near Subiaco, Rome
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Sublime Snowdonia

Sublime Snowdonia

Looking northwest towards Llyn Peris in the Vale of Llanberis, North Wales
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John Frye Bourne (1912–1991): A Portrait

John Frye Bourne (1912–1991): A Portrait

John Frye Bourne (1912–1991) was the youngest student to be accepted at the Royal Academy Schools since J.M.W. Turner
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On the Hooghly

On the Hooghly

Life on the Hooghly river in Bengal, through the eyes—and pen—of Malcolm Hamilton Beattie (1862–1941)
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Italianate Architectural Capriccios from an ill-fated artist

Italianate Architectural Capriccios from an ill-fated artist

Two rare and poignant Italianate works by the young architect John Harper (1809–1842) who died of malaria on his way to Naples in 1842 aged just thirty-two
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After a Master

After a Master

Rembrandt's Self-Portrait in Cap: Laughing from our collection of fine etchings after the master by Francesco Novelli (1764–1836)
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A Rare Bloom

A Rare Bloom

Rare original orchid portraits from the greats of the genre, James Laird Macfarlane and Nellie Roberts
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Decorative Elegance

Decorative Elegance

Newly listed this week is this elegant trio of 19th-century French frieze designs—hunting scenes in the style of Flemish tapestries of the 16th century
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A Cut Above

A Cut Above

From our new collection of 19th-century cut paper silhouettes
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Aglionby Portraits

Aglionby Portraits

Mary, Jane and Elizabeth. Three generations of portraits...
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Summer Memories on the Côte d'Azur

Summer Memories on the Côte d'Azur

Summer memories on the Côte d'Azur
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Timeless Sussex

Timeless Sussex

A brooding landscape by interesting Slade School artist Philip Hugh Padwick ROI RBA, whose work has a timeless quality inspired by classical compositions by 18th-century masters, combined with a rootedness in the British landscape, particularly that around his home in Sussex
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In Avian Company...

In Avian Company...

Vibrant miniature 19th-century Company School bird studies on Indian mica
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Breezy days on the Pembrokeshire coast

Breezy days on the Pembrokeshire coast

Breezy days on the Pembrokeshire coast at Saundersfoot with Jane Dorothy Vickerman (née Harvey) and family
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Alpine Beauty' in Himachal Pradesh

'Alpine Beauty' in Himachal Pradesh

The sublime 'Alpine' slopes pictured here are not European but rather in the Chamba district in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, named 'Alpine Beauty' by British officers
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Colourful Benares

Colourful Benares

Colourful figures—entertainers, ascetics and trades from everyday street life—from our fabulous set of Benares School Indian Company paintings on mica
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Rajasthan in the 1880s and 1890s

Rajasthan in the 1880s and 1890s

Rajasthan in the 1880s and 1890s through the eyes of a female Scottish expat
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School's out for Summer

School's out for Summer

School's out and my thoughts inevitably turn to the far south-western reaches of the British Isles at this time of year, so here are some bright and breezy evocative depictions of Porthleven and St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, from our recent sell-out collection by S
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A Scottish Victorian: John Stirling (1820–1871)

A Scottish Victorian: John Stirling (1820–1871)

Newly listed this week we have this respendent portrait pair by the Scottish artist John Stirling (1820–1871)
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Sanguine about Sanguine

Sanguine about Sanguine

Newly listed, this pair of 18th-century French studies in sanguine
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Colour & Form

Colour & Form

Amidst all the brown paper and stories (which we love!), it is sometimes refreshing to list pictures that are purely a visual delight of colour and form!
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Rare Chinese Herbarium

Rare Chinese Herbarium

Further Chinese works from the Minnie Wright 1858 collection include unusual plant specimens collected at locations around Hangzhou, the southern terminus of the Grand Canal
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Qing Dynasty Botanicals

Qing Dynasty Botanicals

From our new collection of mid-19th-century Chinese works, this gorgeous group of delicate Qing Dynasty botanical watercolours—8 available in total
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Laughing with Pierre-Georges Jeanniot

Laughing with Pierre-Georges Jeanniot

This fabulous pair of artist's print proofs for the French satirical magazine Le Rire bring us the colour, opulence and acerbic wit of the Belle Epoque
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Hannah Turner, Student of Cotman

Hannah Turner, Student of Cotman

This delightful drawing shows John Sell Cotman's influence as a teacher in the early decades of the 19th century—drawn by the daughter of one of his important patrons
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A Grand Tour

A Grand Tour

A departure from our usual paintings and drawings, this week we have been cataloguing a fascinating group of albumen prints
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An Interwar Venus

An Interwar Venus

From yesterday's Venus de' Medici to today's bathing beauty from the 1920s
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Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds
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Paris Life

Paris Life

This charming set of drawings by an English hand are a wonderful depiction of French society in the 1820s
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A Natural Selection

A Natural Selection

William Neave Parker (1910–1961) spent much of his career working for the Natural History Museum in London and his illustrations were regularly reproduced in the London Illustrated News
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Fruits of Labour

Fruits of Labour

The delectable still lifes of the celebrated Victorian painter of flowers, nests and fruit, George Clare
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Harriet' at Cherbourg

'Harriet' at Cherbourg

New this week, a handsome marine work in ink and wash, heightened with white— a fine example by esteemed maritime painter Nicholas Matthew Condy (1818–1851) and an interesting subject in the history of competitive yachting
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Italian Eritrea

Italian Eritrea

Interesting pictures depicting 1940s Eritrea by Italian artist Giovanni Romagnoli (1893–1976)
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Alice Squire RI (1840–1936)

Alice Squire RI (1840–1936)

Working at a time when women could not gain the same recognition as men, Alice Squire RI (1840–1936) nevertheless exhibited widely, including at the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Society of British Artists and Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours

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Grand Hotel des Etrangers

Grand Hotel des Etrangers

The prospect of ruin seems to permeate the very fabric of the buildings of Italy, the notion of ancientness somehow embedded in the country's architecture
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On the Grand Canal, Venice

On the Grand Canal, Venice

Keeping to a Grand Tour theme, newly listed this week is this sumptuous veduta oil showing an iconic view on the Grand Canal in Venice
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A very Grand Tour!

A very Grand Tour!

We were thrilled to have our artwork featured recently in the BBC's Rob and Rylan's Grand Tour! Episode 2, where the pair visit Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance, and get to ascend the magnificent Duomo—depicted in an exemplary manner in our Neapolital School veduta
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A Beau Scholar

A Beau Scholar

This fine portrait miniature of a dashing young Oxford scholar bears a close resemblance to the Regency arbiter of fashion Beau Brummell, who attended Oxford
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Making Hay on the Thames

Making Hay on the Thames

Thames barges carrying stacked hay were once a common site on the Thames, transporting hay from the farms of Suffolk, Essex and Kent to London, where it was required for the capital's thousands of horses
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