Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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14-D Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
- FEATURE -
Though it sold well at $24,445, there is something rather sad
about the ormolu-framed double portrait miniature on enamel of
Edward and Hester Fowke, which was painted in 1750 by the Swiss
artist Jean André Rouquet and proved to be one of the more desir-
able pieces in a Bonhams miniatures sale of November 19, 2014.
At the time, Edward, who had been born at Fort St. George,
Madras, India (perhaps the son of an East India Company admin-
istrator), was aged 36 and his wife, born Hester Hollond at Wilm-
ington in Kent, was in her mid-twenties. They had married four
years earlier but the year 1750 brought tragedy. First, their daugh-
ter, Philadelphia, died in infancy, and shortly after this portrait was
completed, Hester too died. The picture had remained with Hes-
ter’s family ever since and was sold by
a descendant.
Many members of the Hollond fam-
ily were resident in Madras at one time
and another portrait showing an uniden-
tified member of the family—the chap
seen in the portrait by John Smart repro-
duced near right—was sold at $30,310.
A watercolour on ivory portrait signed
and dated “J.S. / 1795,” followed by an
“I” for India, where Smart had been liv-
ing and working for many years, it also
bears on the reverse an oval glazed aper-
ture that reveals the gilt metal mono-
gram “JH.”
There is no mention of a Mr. Hollond
in Daphne Foskett’s John Smart: The
Man and His Miniatures (1964), said the
auctioneers, but given the vagaries of
spelling at the time, a 1799 miniature of
a “Miss Holland, afterwards Crawford”
and an 1806 portrait of a “Mr. Holland”
may be relatives.
Harriet Cockerell, or Harriet
Rushout as she was born—the
subject of the miniature seen far
right—presents no such problems
of identification. A celebrated
society beauty, she was one of
the daughters of John Rushout,
Baron Northwick, and his wife,
Rebecca—girls known collectively as the “Three Graces.” Making
its third appearance at auction (it was previously seen at Sotheby’s in
1937 and 1984), this enamel portrait was painted in 1810 by Henry
Bone, but it is based on an earlier miniature by Andrew Plimer. At
Bonhams the Bone version sold for $15,465.
The most unusual of the miniatures seen in the Knightsbridge sale
was one with only a lady’s right eye, traditionally said to be that
of Charlotte Augusta, Princess of Wales and legitimate daughter of
King George IV and Caroline of Brunswick, and it is engraved to
that effect on the base. Born in 1796, Charlotte married Prince Leo-
pold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield but only 18 months later, still only
21, she died after the stillborn delivery of a son.
This curious watercolour on ivory is set into a chased gilt-metal
bracelet which bears, in addition to the identification of the sitter as
Charlotte, the words (in French) “Though absent, always present,”
and on a gold, heart-shaped locket, this time in English, “In Life
Beloved / In Death Lamented.” The interior of the locket is glazed
to reveal a lock of dark blond hair on white silk. It sold at $16,035.
At Christie’s, in the miniatures section of a November 25 and 26,
2014, “Centuries of Style” sale, a portrait by the German artist Peter
Edward Stroely of Tsar Paul I of Russia, wearing a uniform of the
prestigious Preobrajensky Regiment that dates it to 1799 and a num-
catalogue remains the only com-
plete record of the von Klem-
perer collection, for in 1938 it
was seized and confiscated by
the Nazis. Debate as to where
it should find a new, safer home
dragged on for many years,
and in the end it was largely
destroyed during the devastat-
ing bombing raids on Dresden
in February 1945—still packed
in cases in a truck in the yard of
Rammenau Castle.
Some pieces and fragments
were recovered from the rubble
at the war’s end and placed in
the Dresden State Porcelain Col-
lections as a reminder of what
once had been. Family enquiries
as to what remained of the col-
lection brought no satisfaction,
but in 1991, after the collapse of
East Germany and reunification,
many of the surviving pieces
were returned to descendants,
who then generously returned 63
pieces to the museum as a gift.
In December 2010, 39 other
pieces, some fragmentary or
broken, were sold at Bonhams—
something I reported in the April
2011 issue of M.A.D.
In those confusing postwar
years, the Meissen teapot was
acquired from Elfriede Langeloh
of Cologne by the Florida-based
Meissen collector Ralph Wark,
but for almost 50 years it was to
be seen at the Cumner Museum
of Art and Gardens in Jackson-
ville, until in September 2012
the museum returned it to the
von Klemperer family.
Finely painted in famille verte
style in enamels and Böttger
lustre with a continuous garden
scene, it is of an unusual type
and at Bonhams, on November
26 last year, it sold for a treble
estimate $202,230.
Modelled by J.J. Kändler
and dating from circa 1740, the
Meissen figure of Harlequin
with a monkey (seen below left)
was once part of the extensive
collections of Emma Budge of
Hamburg.
Emma died in 1937, but rather
than let the estate pass to her
heirs, the Nazis seized control
of her home and its treasures—
putting all of it up for sale at
the Berlin auction house Paul
Graupe. The items were sold
for only a fraction of their real
value, but not even the relatively
meagre sums raised made it to
Budge’s rightful heirs.
What happened in subsequent
decades is not known, but almost
60 years on it was bequeathed to
London’s Victoria and Albert
Museum, in memory of her late
husband, by Mrs. O.J. Finney,
and this was one of those items
that Emma Budge’s heirs were
finally able to track down.
Last year, it was returned to
them by the V & A and at Bon-
hams on November 26 it sold for
$126,690.
To put the size and importance of
the “lost” von Klemperer Meissen
collection into some sort of per-
spective, I have included this page
from the Bonhams sale catalogue.
An old family photograph, it
shows a section of one room in the
family’s Dresden home, with one
china cabinet and part of another
clearly visible, along with plates
hung on the walls. At the top is an
enlargement of part of one cabinet
and circled in red (though perhaps
not discernible in this reproduc-
tion) is the Meissen teapot that
sold for just over $200,000—all
but lost amongst all those other
treasures.
A restituted Meissen figure of
Harlequin and a monkey, sold for
$126,690 at Bonhams.
An Electrifying Fence!
Aposter celebrating the
U.S. Rural Electrifi-
cation Act of 1935 would
to many seem an unlikely
auction icon, but that is
how Lester Beall’s design
is viewed in collecting
circles, and the unbacked,
condition A- example of
his 1939 poster was sold
for $23,655 at Christie’s
South Kensington on
November 13, 2014.
Part of Roosevelt’s New
Deal, the scheme it pro-
motes provided funding to
develop electrical power
throughout rural areas of
the U.S.A., in the hope
that the advancing infra-
structure would raise liv-
ing standards and promote
higher employment. Beall’s striking composition echoes the Ameri-
can flag in its red, white, and blue stripes and the youngsters leaning
on a fence are, I assume, looking to a brighter, more mechanised
future.
Boleadoras clasped in the fig-
ure’s left hand give a sim-
ple clue as to the identity of the
model for this exceptionally well
preserved ship’s figurehead—a
South American gaucho—but
while the 24¾" high figure has in
recent times been languishing in
an English garage, a protective
blanket over his head, his history
is far more dramatic.
Though the Atlantic slave
trade to Brazil had been
declared illegal by Britain in
1850, the smuggling of slaves
continued and a year later,
HMS Sharpshooter, one of
the first iron steamships to see
service with the Royal Navy,
intercepted and boarded the
Brazilian vessel Piratenim,
suspecting that it was engaged
in the trafficking. Her captain
tried to persuade the boarding
party that all his passengers
were legitimate, but it was
quickly discovered that some
100 slaves were on board.
The background to this seizure
is told in two items that accom-
panied the figure when it was
The Sharpshooter and the Gaucho
put up for sale by Sworders of
Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex
on December 9, 2014. One was a
copy of a privately printed work
by Captain John C. Bailey, who
was commanding the Sharp-
shooter at the time; the other
was a typed draft of an article
by Averil Mackensie-Grieve that
was published in a 1945 issue
of the journal The Mariner’s
Mirror .
The latter, called “The Last
of the Brazilian Slavers…,”
explained that the figurehead
was not on the Piratenim’s
bow when she was captured,
as one might expect, but was
found stored away in the hold.
It was suggested that being an
unusual figurehead, it had been
unshipped as being likely to
lead to easy identification of the
vessel.
John Black of Sworders vis-
ited the National Maritime
Museum at Greenwich during
the course of their investigations
and the museum had a telephone
line booked for the auction, but
on the day revealed that they had
Carved as a SouthAmerican gau-
cho, this figurehead was seized in
1851 when a Royal Navy steam-
ship, HMS Sharpshooter, boarded
a Brazilian vessel involved in the
slave trade. In a recent sale held
by Sworders, an Essex salesroom,
it was secured by an American
telephone bidder at $93,940.
Artists with an Eye for the Miniature
A double portrait miniature on
enamel of Edward and Hester
Fowke, painted in a cruel year
that saw the death of both Hes-
ter and her infant child, sold for
$24,445 at Bonhams.
Henry Bone’s portrait (after
Andrew Plimer) of Harriet, one
of “The Three Graces,” sold in
Knightsbridge at $15,465.
Sold for $30,310 at Bon-
hams was John Smart’s
portrait of a gentleman
who is unidentified but had
the initials “J.H.” and is
thought to have been of the
same family as the unfor-
tunate Hester Fowke, who
was a Hollond by birth.
The “eye” of Princess Char-
lotte Augusta, sold for $16,035 at
Bonhams.
Peter Stroely’s miniature of
Tsar Paul I, sold for $117,040 at
Christie’s.
ber of orders and decorations,
went to a Russian collector at a
treble estimate $117,040.
A similar portrait miniature
by Stroely of Paul I (who was
assassinated in 1801) was sold at
Christie’s in London in Decem-
ber 2004 at just $11,625, but
the miniature that brought the
six-figure bid in last November’s
sale was last seen at auction as
recently as June 2010, in a Paris
sale, when it made $125,690.
been unable to raise the neces-
sary funds, and the figurehead
went instead to an American col-
lector bidding by telephone.
The selling price, by the way,
was a ten times estimate $93,940.