From the Blog
News, stories and musings from the eclectic world of S&W.
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Posted on 10 November 2025
New this week, we have a beautiful rare pair of drawings by the 19th-century Italian sculptor Giosuè Bernardino Meli (1816–1893)
Posted on 08 October 2025
Robert Murdoch Wright (1858–1926) is best known for his depictions of the Middle East...
Posted on 01 October 2025
Voyage from Calcutta to Suez 1873, topographical sketches by by A.H. Walker
Posted on 25 September 2025
The technique in watercolour and pencil of Eleanor Hughes RI (1882–1959) has been compared to that of Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Posted on 12 September 2025
Picturesque views in Maharashtra and Gujarat by Sir James Braithwaite Peile (1833–1906), at Thana, Ghogha, the Kathiawar peninsula and the Gulf of Khambhat
Posted on 23 July 2025
From our new collection of 19th-century landscapes after Leitch, McKewan and Cox, showing the British watercolour tradition in its humble glory
Posted on 11 June 2025
We have been foraging in the porous world of 19th-century mycology this week, with a beautiful collection of wild mushroom studies drawn from life at Malvern and Grasmere in 1858–9
Posted on 17 February 2025
This drawing c.1830s attributed to Joseph Nash OWS (1809–1878) is a jostling, visual fe...
Posted on 14 January 2025
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
Posted on 04 January 2025
I'm not a parent of teenagers yet, but this still made me chuckle
Posted on 31 December 2024
As the sun sets on 2024, we wish all our wonderful customers all the very best for 2025
Posted on 28 December 2024
With the temptations of Bacchus all around, I'm trying to remain serene as this beautiful Neoclassical bacchante!
Posted on 14 December 2024
We have listed some gorgeous 19th-century Indian pictures today
Posted on 10 December 2024
Delighting us this week is this superbly painted biblical scene by Richard Westall RA (1769–1836)
Posted on 07 December 2024
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
Posted on 29 October 2024
Looking northwest towards Llyn Peris in the Vale of Llanberis, North Wales
Posted on 26 October 2024
John Frye Bourne (1912–1991) was the youngest student to be accepted at the Royal Academy Schools since J.M.W. Turner
Posted on 12 October 2024
Life on the Hooghly river in Bengal, through the eyes—and pen—of Malcolm Hamilton Beattie (1862–1941)
Posted on 01 October 2024
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
Posted on 25 September 2024
Rembrandt's Self-Portrait in Cap: Laughing from our collection of fine etchings after the master by Francesco Novelli (1764–1836)
Posted on 24 September 2024
Rare original orchid portraits from the greats of the genre, James Laird Macfarlane and Nellie Roberts
Posted on 21 September 2024
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
Posted on 17 September 2024
From our new collection of 19th-century cut paper silhouettes
Posted on 14 September 2024
Mary, Jane and Elizabeth. Three generations of portraits...
Posted on 27 August 2024
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
Posted on 23 August 2024
Vibrant miniature 19th-century Company School bird studies on Indian mica
Posted on 20 August 2024
Breezy days on the Pembrokeshire coast at Saundersfoot with Jane Dorothy Vickerman (née Harvey) and family
Posted on 17 August 2024
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
Posted on 10 August 2024
Colourful figures—entertainers, ascetics and trades from everyday street life—from our fabulous set of Benares School Indian Company paintings on mica
Posted on 07 August 2024
Rajasthan in the 1880s and 1890s through the eyes of a female Scottish expat
Posted on 27 July 2024
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
Posted on 25 July 2024
Newly listed this week we have this respendent portrait pair by the Scottish artist John Stirling (1820–1871)
Posted on 23 July 2024
Newly listed, this pair of 18th-century French studies in sanguine
Posted on 20 July 2024
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!
Posted on 17 July 2024
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
Posted on 09 July 2024
From our new collection of mid-19th-century Chinese works, this gorgeous group of delicate Qing Dynasty botanical watercolours—8 available in total
Posted on 06 July 2024
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
Posted on 02 July 2024
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
Posted on 30 June 2024
A departure from our usual paintings and drawings, this week we have been cataloguing a fascinating group of albumen prints
Posted on 29 June 2024
From yesterday's Venus de' Medici to today's bathing beauty from the 1920s
Posted on 18 June 2024
This charming set of drawings by an English hand are a wonderful depiction of French society in the 1820s
Posted on 16 June 2024
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
