From the Blog
News, stories and musings from the eclectic world of S&W.
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Posted on 26 March 2024
We have been down a vertitable rabbit hole this week—not in honour of a certain forthcoming bunny festival, but because we have entered the chaotic subterranean world of mycology
Posted on 24 March 2024
For the blossoming of Spring this week, this exuberant gouache by sought-after illustrator Kay Nixon (1894–1988)
Posted on 19 March 2024
Delving below the surface this week, we've had interesting conversations about when art belies biography, as was the case, by all accounts, for tenacious and eccentric Channel Islands artist Ethel Sophia Cheeswright (1874–1977)
Posted on 17 March 2024
Fascinating cataloguing an intriguing group of early 19th-century views in Portugal this week, and thinking about the difficulty in verifying views in a time before photography and when the documentary evidence is scant
Posted on 12 March 2024
New this week, we have a wonderful evocation of Victorian Wakefield by the celebrated watercolourist Louisa Fennell (1847–1930)
Posted on 09 March 2024
From our new collection of pictures by talented late-Victorian architect Philip J
Posted on 20 February 2024
Fascinating to learn about Katharine Jowett (1883–1972), one of only a few Western female artists who chose to live and work in Japan, Korea and northern China in the years between the two world wars
Posted on 11 February 2024
The artists in our new Garbutt Hull collection read like a who's who of early-19th-century Hull, only these pictures are by the women behind the men who were the city's shipbuilders & brokers, timber merchants & sawmill owners, wine merchants & brewers
Posted on 06 February 2024
A lovely watercolour by James Duffield Harding OWS (1798–1863) exemplifying contemporary taste for the picturesque
Posted on 04 February 2024
New this week, this gorgeous set design featuring elements of decorative Art Nouveau, Art Deco and mystical Symbolism
Posted on 23 January 2024
We have added interesting new pictures to our 19th-century Algiers collection by English eccentric and 'wayward philosopher' George John Cayley (1826–1878)
Posted on 22 January 2024
Our new collection of 1830s watercolours—depicting flowers, leaves, butterflies and other insects—were exquisitely painted by Louisa Hare (1776–1853), who was married to Captain James Hare (1772–1826) of Whittern estate at Lyonshall in Herefordshire
Posted on 16 January 2024
This early-Victorian drawing made us look twice this week—a quirky collaged image that combines hand-coloured engravings with layered paper and original watercolour
Posted on 14 January 2024
Late Romantic narrative illustrative art was highly popular in the second half of the 19th century, particularly amongst women artists, but its study has been neglected
Posted on 02 January 2024
We love (and covet) this elegant Wimpole Street interior by Henry William Burgess
Posted on 28 December 2023
Our Picture of the Month for December is a triumph in aesthetic elegance by the distinguished ceramics designer and potter Gordon Mitchell Forsyth RI ARCA (1879–1952)
Posted on 26 December 2023
With Christmas as we know it being largely a Victorian invention, the Victorian home—and even more so, the Victorian rectory—seems uniquely suited to this time of year
Posted on 24 December 2023
Some of you may recognise the cherubic red-head in this vision of Yuletide bliss as the spirited putto from Gaston Cervelli's satirical cartoons, Fighting and Bawling Babies (swipe left!)
Posted on 19 December 2023
Championing another female, today we have this captivating large watercolour by Madeline Rachel Wells RBA (1879–1959)
Posted on 17 December 2023
We have enjoyed listing some charming pictures this week spanning four female generations of the Waller-Bridge family—of inimitable Fleabag writer and actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge fame
Posted on 12 December 2023
We're loving our new collection of Edwardian cartoons capturing a slice of life on the North Wales coast around Anglesey, Llandudno and Rhyl in 1912–13
Posted on 10 December 2023
New this week, we have a beautiful charcoal drawing with an intriguing identity that takes us to the very heart of Napoleonic France
Posted on 21 November 2023
Our new collection of picturesque views in the Peak District and North Wales 1832
Posted on 19 November 2023
This interesting view at Etna around 1837, by landscape painter James Bridges (1799–1865), shows the crater 'La Cisternazza', which formed dramatically when the top part of Etna collapsed during the 1797 eruption
Posted on 07 November 2023
We have enjoyed this week listing a fabulously stylish collection of ex libris relating to the Vienna Secession movement, featuring designs by some of the leading graphic artists of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century
Posted on 05 November 2023
Maria Hampshire Eaton (1862–1944) was a woman seemingly ahead of her time: awarded a medal by the South Kensington Schools, relocating to Canada for a period in the 1880s and by 1901 describing herself as an 'artist photographer [on her] own acc[ount]'
Posted on 04 November 2023
Newly listed, these entertaining hand-illustrated envelopes of philatelic interest
Posted on 26 October 2023
S&W Picture of the Month is by one of the most significant artists to have hailed from the Channel Islands
Posted on 24 October 2023
I'd love to know more about the hand behind our new collection of caricatures of the British Raj
Posted on 22 October 2023
From our new collection of works, 'Souvenir of Naples', are these jewel-like renderings of the frescoes at Pompeii by a local early 19th-century artist
Posted on 17 October 2023
The subject may be southern European but this small gem of a painting by Scottish artist Middleton Alexander Jameson (1851–1919) bears the influence of his time spent in the northern French artist colonies at Grez-sur-Loing and Etaples, and later St Ives in Cornwall
Posted on 15 October 2023
When something tugs on the personal heart strings it's very hard not to get carried away with imagining narratives of the past
Posted on 10 October 2023
A gorgeous trio of new (200-year-old) Chinese paintings on pith this week—the watercolour pooling atop the spongy tissue of the Tetrapanex papyrifera plant to assert their existence with age-defying vibrancy
Posted on 08 October 2023
The Valley of the Rocks at Watcombe near Torquay—once part of the Watcombe Park estate belonging to Isambard Kingdom Brunel—in the mid-19th-century played host to two open-air music fetes, attended by thousands
Posted on 26 September 2023
New this week, a collection of large watercolours by Lt Col J.A. Armstrong
Posted on 24 September 2023
Autumn is officially here, and this week we are musing on the cyclical passing of time and the iconography of the seasons, so engrained in the British psyche, with our new collection of nature illustrations
Posted on 19 September 2023
Not so far from us today, with this Somerset subject—a poetic rendition of the quarry at Ham Hill by Victorian painter Alfred Tidey (1808–1892)
Posted on 17 September 2023
Learning about the English eccentric, 'wayward philosopher' George John Cayley (1826–1878) this week, through his vibrant snapshot sketches at Algiers, 1874–5
Posted on 12 September 2023
Newly listed, this charming and quirky watercolour, showing a charitable home 'supported by voluntary contributions', captures an essence of Victorian England
Posted on 05 September 2023
This week we have added to our superb collection of drawings by master Henry William Burgess
Posted on 03 September 2023
Encyclopaedic subjects from early 19th-century Moravian, Leopold Billek
