NEWBURY.- The Sporting and Country Life sale at
Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ Newbury base, Donnington Priory, will take place on 13th December 2016 at 10am. Prize lots include beautiful equestrian paintings, silver objects and striking bronze sculptures, with auction estimates ranging from £2,000-£22,000.
One of many auction highlights is Peter Biegel’s depiction of Newmarket (est. £8,000-£12,000). Biegel’s family members were also horsemen; his father was Dutch and was also a keen horseman, known as the 'Flying Dutchman' in the hunting field.
Continuing the racing theme is Dame Laura Knight’s watercolour painting, Derby Day, estimated at £10,000-£15,000. Dame Laura Knight is one of the most iconic and prolific female artists of the twentieth century; she was the first woman to be elected as a Royal Academician and the only woman to be given two war commissions in the First and Second World Wars. In the mid-1930s Knight befriended and painted groups of gypsies at the Epsom and Ascot racecourses. Knight frequently returned to the racecourses and painted from the back of a vintage Rolls-Royce car, which was large enough to accommodate her easel. Often pairs of gypsy women would pose at the open door of the Rolls-Royce, with the race-day crowds in the background.
John Frederick Herring Senior’s oil painting Stable Companions, a saddlehorse with hounds is estimated at £18,000-£22,000. The artist spent the last years of his life at Meopham Park near Tonbridge. In 1845, he was appointed Animal Painter to HRH the Duchess of Kent, followed by a commission from Queen Victoria, who was to remain a patron for the rest of his life. After his early career painting the finest thoroughbreds and prize-winning horses of the British aristocracy, he turned to the subject of the farmyard and stable interiors in his later life earning him much wide spread commercial success by selling the engravings of these paintings.
Further sale highlights include Frederic Whiting’s watercolour painting Coursing, The Waterloo Cup (est. £2,000-£3,000). The Waterloo Cup was described as the blue riband event of the hare-coursing calendar and took place at Great Altcar in West Lancashire from 1836 to 2005. During its heyday, around the end of the 1800s, The Waterloo Cup attracted more than 80,000 spectators.
Philip Blacker’s Galloping Horse (Est. £4,000-£5,000) and James Osborne’s Eclipse (Est. £5,000-£7,000) are two fine examples of bronze sculpture on offer at this sale. Eclipse (1764 – 1789) was regarded as the world’s finest racehorse and retired unbeaten, foaled during and named after the solar eclipse of 1 April 1764, at the Cranbourne Lodge. It was Osborne’s delight in expressing action which first brought him recognition. Through the medium of bronze, he has produced flawless sculptures of birds, horses, hounds and wildlife, adhering to the anatomical strictness of the life models from which he drew inspiration.
Estimated at £2,000-£3,000 is a drawing by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer RA (1802-18): Waiting for Loo; A Study of a Dandie Dinmont. Loo was Lady Louisa Ashburton, second wife of the second Lord Ashburton.
Landseer was a close friend of hers and stayed with them at Lochluichart Lodge, Ross-shire. There is a collage on the dining room window there which Landseer did while waiting for lunch; it appears she was always keeping people waiting. Indeed Loo was much more than a friend to him, Landseer was passionately in love with her and though much older might have married her if he had not been for her sudden engagement to the retiring yet immensely wealthy Lord Ashburton in 1858. Landseer's feelings about Louisa are vividly conveyed in a series of letters he wrote in 1858: "I really do try to forget and forgive-they say a certain dreadful place is paved with good intentions so am I! the book I promised to close -is not locked!..."
A pair of matched late 19th/early 20th century German silver game birds (est. £5,000-£8,000) are among the silver works on offer, as well as an Indian two-handled, silver trophy punch bowl (est. £1,800-£2,200).
