Illustrated top right is the highlight of Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury’s March 26 picture sale, a 4ft 3in x 3ft 5in (1.30 x 1.04m) oil on canvas by Sir Thomas Lawrence of Lady Georgiana Agar-Ellis and her son, Henry.
Born in 1804, Lady Georgiana was the third of 12 children of George, 6th Earl of Carlisle and granddaughter of the famous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. This portrait was almost certainly painted in 1827-8 when Lady Agar-Ellis was 24 and her son three, and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828 and at Agnew’s in 1951 as well as being published in Kenneth Garlick’s work on Lawrence. Privately consigned from a local Wiltshire vendor, the painting is estimated at £40,000-60,000.
The Salisbury auctioneers featured the painting in an advertisement promoting the auction in Gazette No 1580, March 15, where it was spotted, amongst others, by Mark Huddleston of Cumbrian auctioneers Penrith, Farmers’ and Kidd’s. Mr Huddleston was sufficiently interested to contact Woolley and Wallis’s Paul Viney because his quarterly antiques and collectors’ sale, also scheduled for March 26, included another much smaller version of the same subject, the 131/4 x 10in (34 x 25cm) oil on mahogany panel pictured below right right.
The Penrith auctioneers have catalogued their smaller painting, which has been consigned from a West Cumbrian private source, as “Circle of Sir Thomas Lawrence”, with an estimate of £1000-1500. Mr Huddleston feels it is contemporary with the artist and the work also features an interesting label on the reverse reading The only manufactory for Genuine Flemish Millboards Patronised by the Royal Academy and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Established 1795.... There is also the remnants of another label reading Mrs L.W. Cannon, Timbered Cottage, Witheridge Lane, Penn, Bucks.
Two near identical versions of the same subject going under the hammer on the same day; what odds, one wonders, would a bookmaker give on the chances of such a coincidence?
A unique double
An advertisement in the Antiques Trade Gazette has brought to light a remarkable coincidence – that the two paintings illustrated here, clearly depicting the same subject, are both to be auctioned on the same day by two different auctioneers at opposite ends of the country.
