Le salon

John Opie (Cornwall 1761-1807 London) The Red Boy:

Lot 115. Portrait of Master McDonough, full-length, in a red jacket and breeches with a black hat, holding a cricket bat, in a wooded landscape - oil on canvas - 50¼ x 40½ in. (128.3 x 102.9 cm.) - estimate : 200,000 - 300,000 British pounds

Provenance : Hardy Wells, by 1876.
W.A. Darent Harrison; Christie's, London, 3 June 1876, lot 49 (sold for 26 gns. to Lesser).
George Williams, of Scorrier, Cornwall.
Colonel Repington, by 1911.
Mrs William George Raphael, 9 Connaught Place, London.
With Thos. Agnews & Sons Ltd., London.
Mr George Ansley, by the late 1940s, and by descent to the present owners.

Literature : J.J. Rogers, Opie and his works, London, 1887, pp. 122-3 and 204.
A. Earland, John Opie and his circle, London, 1911, pp. 292 and 341.

Exposition : London, Royal Academy, 1794, no. 120, as 'Portrait of a boy'.
London, Royal Academy, Works of the Old Masters, 1876, no. 41, as 'The Red Boy' (lent by Hardy Wells).

Notes : This magnificent picture is both an example of Opie's precocious talent for child portraiture and a key cricketing image. Dating to 1793, it was painted at the height of Opie's artistic career, and shows him at his most confident and accomplished.

Born and raised in Cornwall, Opie was discovered by Dr John Wolcot (an amateur artist and critic, and both a pupil and friend of Richard Wilson), who launched him onto the London artistic scene in 1781 as the 'Cornish wonder', cultivating the impression of a provincial talent with none of the graces of a society painter. This strategy proved successful; Opie enjoyed almost immediate success and was inundated with portrait commissions for the rest of his career. Sir Joshua Reynolds is recorded as having stated to his former pupil James Northcote 'You have no chance here...there is such a young man come out of Cornwall...Like Caravaggio, but finer' (cited in C.R. Leslie and T. Taylor, Life and times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1865, pp. 341-2). Opie also enjoyed success as a history painter, executing three pictures for Macklin's Poets Gallery, four for Macklin's Bible, seven for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and eleven for Bowyer's History gallery. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1788.

This portrait highlights Opie's particular gift for child portraiture, an ability that he had demonstrated in 1784 with his celebrated portraits of the children of the 5th Duke of Argyll, George William, later 6th Duke of Argyll, John Douglas Edward Henry, later 7th Duke of Argyll, and their sisters Lady Augusta and Lady Charlotte Campbell (Private Collection). In 1793, Opie was working on standard-size portraits from his home at 8 Berners Street, however, monumental history paintings and larger, more dynamic portraits such as this one, were being painted in his studio in Hampstead. The present sitter was identified by a miniature of the boy included in the 1876 sale at Christie's, described as 'The Red Boy: Lieut. McD., H.M. 39th Regt., 1813' (lot 50). Joseph McDonough appears in Army Lists for the 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot as an Ensign 19 January 1809 and a Lieutenant 20 December 1809. Further records show that he retired from the Regiment in 1814.

The nature of cricket changed hugely from its origins in the 13th Century. By the mid-18th Century, it was increasing in popularity and steadily evolving into the national sport that it is today. Matches were often played for high stakes and clubs such as The London Club, formed circa 1701, were evolving to organise and regulate the game. The earliest surviving bats resemble a broad, curved hockey stick. These were replaced by the straight blade, as appears here, in circa 1750, with the advent of bowlers pitching the ball up. On the basis of early depictions of the sport, it appears that the game did not originally require a 'wicket', and when one did appear the early type consisted of only two stumps, approximately twelve inches high, with a third cross-stump, or bail. A third vertical stump was first introduced in 1775, to make the bowler's job less arduous. The two-stump wicket had been completely phased out by the early 19th century. The present picture is therefore a comparatively late example of it still in use.

George Williams, who either bought the picture from Lesser Galleries, or commissioned the Gallery as an agent in the 1876 Christie's sale, took the picture to his Cornish home, Scorrier, not far from Trevellas where Opie was born. The Williams were a well-established Cornish family with mining interests, who had made their fortune in 1845 when Michael Williams, on learning about a dramatic rise in the price of tin on a trip to London, rushed back to Cornwall, beating the London coach carrying the news, to buy all the available tin in his home county. The family owned a number of pictures by Opie, but may have been prompted to part with the present picture after a disastrous fire at Scorrier in 1908. The picture was later in the collection of Mrs William George Raphael, who built up a large group of late 18th and early 19th century portraits during the 1890s. Viv Hendra

Studio of François Gérard (Rome 1770-1837 Paris) Portrait of Charles-Ferdinand d'Artois, Duc de Berry (1778-1820)

Lot 115. in hungting dress, a hat on his right hand, a trumpet on a rock to his left, in a rocky wounded landscape - oil on canvas, unlined - 241,3 x 141,9 cm - estimate : 50,000 - 80,000 British pounds

A pair of George III giltwood open armchairs - circa 1770, in the manner of Thomas Chippendale

Lot 135. estimate : 20,000 - 40,000 British pounds

A George III giltwood console table - circa 1735, in the manner of Villiam Kent

Lot 136. estimate : 40,000 - 60,000 British pounds

Le petit salon

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt., P.R.A. (1829-1896) Forlorn; or 'I am never merry when I hear sweet music' (The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1)

Lot 230. signed with monogram and dated 'JEM 1888' (lower left) - oil on canvas - 42¼ x 36½ in. (107.5 x 92.5 cm.) - estimate : 70,000 - 100,000 British pounds

Provenance : Brought with another painting from Millais by Charles Wertheimer for a total of 2,000 guineas.
General H. Hopkinson, and by descent to H.L. Hopkinson; his sale, Christie's, London, 10 May 1907, lot 118, as 'Jessica' (460 gns to Wallis).
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's Belgravia, 1 October 1979, lot 30.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 8 June 1993, lot 28.

Literrature : H. Blackburn (ed.), Grosvenor Notes, London, 1888, p. 37, illustrated.
Times, 1 June 1888, p. 13.
Athenaeum, 2 June 1888, p. 700.
M.H. Spielmann, Millais and His Works, Edinburgh and London, 1898, p. 177, no. 303.
J.G. Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, London, 1899, vol. II, p. 484.

Exposition : London, New Gallery, 1888, no. 99.

Notes : Hovering somewhere between a formal portrait and a literary subject, Forlorn belongs to a class of picture that Millais produced from time to time. Another good example is 'Oh! that a dream so sweet...' of 1872, sold in these Rooms on 13 November 1993 (lot 111) and included in the current Millais exhibition at Tate Britain (no. 87). Both pictures are clearly portraits as distinct from literary narratives, yet they were not commissioned, represent unidentified models, and are literary only in the sense that a quotation is adopted for the title in an attempt to reinforce the picture's primary purpose of invoking a certain mood. 'Oh! that a dream so sweet...', which, according to the critic M.H. Spielmann, shows a young woman 'who has awakened to disillusionment', takes its title from Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh (1817), an orientalist romance set in ancient India which not only provides an appropriate literary tag but is in keeping with the model's dark complexion and exotic dress. In Forlorn the approach is much the same. Indeed, here too there seems to be a link between the model's colouring and the choice of quotation, a line spoken by Shylock's daughter Jessica in the last act of The Merchant of Venice. When the picture was sold at Christie's in 1907 it was in fact called Jessica, as if it was a straightforward account of Shakespeare's character in the manner of T.F. Dicksee or W.P. Frith. As well as upsetting the delicate balance of the original concept, this did violence to the iconography; for while the model's dress of crimson brocade might be described as vaguely 'Venetian', the heavily-wooded landscape background could hardly be less reminiscent of the lagoons.

Millais himself sometimes laid greater stress on the literary dimension, giving his models more specific roles and more strikingly period costume. This was his strategy, for instance, in Stella (Manchester Art Gallery) and Vannessa (Sudley House, Liverpool), portrayals of Jonathan Swift's two heroines exhibited at the Royal Academy respectively in 1868 and 1869. This whole group of works, moreover, may be seen as a sub-section of the 'fancy pictures' of which he was such a keen exponent during his later career. A whole room is devoted to this genre in the current Millais exhibition. As it happens, the examples chosen are all to do with childhood. That, after all, is the area in which he excelled in popular estimation, and where he is most clearly perceived as reviving an idiom that Gainsborough and Reynolds had explored before him in accordance with Englightenment notions of children's innocence. But the survey could well have been broadened to embrace pictures like Forlorn, in which grown-ups masquerade as literary figures or personifications of abstract values. For here too, of course, there were eighteenth-century precedents. If Reynolds had painted his niece as 'Simplicity', so he had his adult sitters as Hebe, St Cecilia or the Tragic Muse. Besides, as Alison Smith observes in the catalogue of the Tate exhibition, 'it is significant that (Millais) took to (fancy pictures) at a time when he was developing a more painterly style in emulation of past masters such as Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough'. This is as true of Forlorn or 'Oh! that a dream so sweet...' as it is of Cherry Ripe or Bubbles.

Forlorn was one of two pictures that Millais showed at the inaugural exhibition at the New Gallery in 1888. At incredible speed the Gallery had been built in Regent Street the previous winter to perpetuate the ideals of the Grosvenor Gallery, which by general consent had been lowering its standards as a result of its owner's financial embarrassment. The picture had a mixed reception from the press. F.G. Stephens, once Millais' fellow Pre-Raphaelite Brother and now the veteran critic on the Athenaeum, admitted that 'the painter's indomitable skill imparts a certain charm to (the) conception'. On the whole, however, he was disappointed, commenting, presumably with inside knowledge, that the artist had 'yielded unwisely to the requests of friends' in deciding to submit the work. The Times was more upbeat, referring to the picture as a 'brilliant sketch', although it objected to what it saw as a discrepancy between title and image. 'Though the title implies a story of unhappiness, there is little in the face that suggests it, and in fact it is plain that the picture has only been painted as an opportunity of dealing with a pretty face and with a wealth of crimson draperies'.

The picture was bought from Millais by the dealer and collector Charles J. Wertheimner, presumably a relation (brother?) of Asher Wertheimer, whose family portraits by Sargent are so familiar in Tate Britain. Charles, who handled a number of works by Millais, including Cherry Ripe (1879) and the landscape Christmas Eve (1887), had a gallery in New Bond Street and a house in Connaught Place. His portrait was painted by Millais in 1888 (Palais de Tokyo, Paris), and a companion portait of Mrs Wertheimer joined it in 1891 (sold in these Rooms 2 November 1990, lot 289). Later the family, like the Asher Wertheimers, would be painted by Sargent.

A letter from Millais to his wife, dated 2 August 1888, in which he mentions having received Wertheimer's payment for Forlorn, is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

William Joseph Shayer (Southampton 1788-1879) 'Confidence', a celebrated American trotter performing a match in harness

Lot 235. Signed and dated 'W J Shayer 1840' (lower left) - oil on canvas - 18 x 24 in. (45.8 x 61 cm.) - estimate : 6,000 - 8,000 British pounds

Provenance : With Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London.

Note : The celebrated trotter Confidence was bought by Louis Bonaparte in New York for 750 guineas, and later presented by him to the Duke of Richmond. Unbeaten throughout his career, he won his final match over two miles across Sunbury Common on 18th October 1839 in 5 minutes 39 seconds. Confidence was also painted by John Frederick Herring, Sen.

A GERMAN BRASS-MOUNTED MAHOGANY PEDESTAL DESK - CIRCA 1800-1820

Lot 245. The superstructure with three-quarter brass gallery fitted with six drawers above a sliding surface and a dummy triple-drawer fall front enclosing a baize-lined writing surface; the interior lacking two drawers, above three drawers and a cupboard door on turned feet - 44½ in. (113 cm.) high; 57¼ in. (145.5 cm.) wide; 28 in. (71 cm.) deep - estimate : 10,000 - 15,000 British pounds

La bibliothèque

A ROMAN SPECIMEN MARBLE TOP ON A LATER PARCEL-GILT AND MAHOGANY TABLE - THE MARBLE TOP BY ALFONSO CAVAMELLI, ROME 1832, THE TABLE LATE 20TH CENTURY

Lot 50. The circular top inlaid with a radiating band of specimen marbles including rhodonite, giallo tigrato, green porphyry, breche rilette, egyptian porphyry, jaspers and agates, with a central malachite circle flanked by lapis lazuli lozenges and a geometric boarder, signed 'Alfonso Cavamelli fece l'anno 1832 Roma', minor restorations and repair to some of the inlaid marbles, the later parcel-gilt and mahogany table with eight fluted legs joined by a pierced stretcher centred with a ormolu foliate mount flanked by two similar mounts, on brass bun feet - The marble top - 63 in. (160 cm.) diameter; the overall height - 28 in. (71 cm.) - estimate : 70,000 - 100,000 British pounds

Provenance : Purchased from Mallett, London.

Notes : The white marble table top, richly mosaiced and polychromed in rare marbles and semi-precious stones, is a masterpiece from the Rome workshops established by Alfonso Cavamelli in the second quarter of the 19th century.

Cavamelli himself commented about a related table 'When the beauty of the general design, harmonious arrangement of the whole, skilful blending of the general colours, and the extraordinary beauty and variety of the various marbles, here brought together are clearly appreciated, this table will greatly interest all who possess refined taste, and know how to value precious objects'. The latter, executed in the 1840s, was inspired by a Roman mosaiced pavement that had been discovered in the 18th Century in the Palatine's 'Palace of the Caesars'. Its marbles were described in 1850 with the assistance of Fausterio Corsi's, Delle pietre antiche, Rome, 1845, and it was noted that '...The centre is composed of various semi-precious stones. It is formed by the artist [Cavamelli] in imitation of Quartz Brescia, or Puddingstone. Amongst them are specimens of Rare Jaspers, Agates, Sardonix, Lapiz Lazuli, Malachite, Topazes, Avventurina etc. etc.' (A. Coleridge, A Nineteenth-Century Roman Mosaic Table-top, Connoisseur, June, 1967, p.449).

The present table displays a medallion of green malachite and comprises an imbricated dolphin-scaled flower that is wreathed by an 'Etruscan' black border with lozenge-fretted ribbon. The latter border also features on a related table, with 'Medusa-head' medallion recalling ancient virtue, that can be attributed to the Cavamelli workshops (sold Christie's New York, 22 May 2002, lot 364). This 'Medusa' table was once at the Château de Groussay, and formed part of the celebrated collection of Charles de Bestegui that made such an impression upon Jean-Charles de Ravenel when he was a young boy. It has been recorded that, 'aged seven, he was dazzled by his visit to the magical Château de Groussay of Carlos de Bestegui, in particular by its grand tour atmosphere' (see Christiane de Nicolay-Mazery, The Finest Houses of Paris, New York, 2000, p.94).

French School (19th Century) An assassin on the shore

Lot 36. oil on canvas - 23½ x 19 1/8 in. (59.5 x 48.5 cm.) - estimate : 10,000 - 15,000 British pounds

Note : It has been suggested that this picture depicts a scene from 'Romance mauresque', a poem published in Victor Hugo's Les Orientales (1829). Victor Hugo was one of the most important and influential writers of the Romantic movement in France and it was this collection of poems that first achieved his wide-spread popularity and reputation as a poet.

A LARGE CONTINENTAL GREEN GLASS TABLE-SERVICE - 20th century

Lot 28. With bell bowls on slender hollow baluster stems, comprising: 11 champagne coupes; 28 large goblets; 24 medium goblets; 28 small goblets; 2 decanters and stoppers (93) - estimate : 3,000 - 5,000 British pounds

Christie's. Un hotel particulier du Faubourg Saint-Germain. The Collection of The Marquis and Marquise de Ravenel. Nov 21, 2007 - Nov 22, 2007. London, King Street.