From the Blog
News, stories and musings from the eclectic world of S&W.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to our newsletter for first look at new pictures, links to latest research and exclusive special offers, straight to your inbox.
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
Posted on 15 June 2024
The delectable still lifes of the celebrated Victorian painter of flowers, nests and fruit, George Clare
Posted on 11 June 2024
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
Posted on 08 June 2024
Interesting pictures depicting 1940s Eritrea by Italian artist Giovanni Romagnoli (1893–1976)
Posted on 04 June 2024
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
Posted on 01 June 2024
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
Posted on 31 May 2024
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
Posted on 30 May 2024
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
Posted on 28 May 2024
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
Posted on 25 May 2024
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
Posted on 23 May 2024
We have enjoyed cataloguing this unsual group of gouaches recently
Posted on 21 May 2024
Henry Wright Kerr RSA RSW (1857–1936) was a fine recorder of Scottish character and arguably Scotland's most famous painter of portraits and genre scenes in watercolour
Posted on 18 May 2024
From our new collection of Etching Revival prints, this striking modernist landscape with an unusual story
Posted on 14 May 2024
This miniature jewel of a painting by Sarah Louisa Kilpack (1839–1909) shows the rocky coast at La Corbière in southwest Jersey
Posted on 12 May 2024
Glorious new 1930s pattern designs by the talented Jean Mary Ogilvie (1920–1997)
Posted on 23 April 2024
Calming vibes from our new Japanese kenpon chakushoku (handpainted on silk), dating from towards the end of the Meiji period
Posted on 21 April 2024
This week we have had the pleasure of discovering the work of the Lewis sisters, Isabel and Florence, who were leading artists for Royal Doulton in the 1880s
Posted on 16 April 2024
This vivid little Neapolitan School gouache shows the 1839 eruption of Vesuvius from a slightly unsual viewpoint—part-way up the mountainside rather than the more typical (and more elegant) vantage point of across the waters of the Bay of Naples
Posted on 07 April 2024
A charming Edwardian portrait of three-year-old Charles Jeffreys Allen (1905–1937) by artist Edith Scannell (1852–1940)
Posted on 05 April 2024
Rather fallen in love with the exquisite embroidery on this Qing Dynasty rank badge
Posted on 03 April 2024
These colourful Dahlias, celebrated and prized for their long blooming period—carrying on until the autumn frosts—bring welcome cheer this week, as the rain in the UK seems to know no end
