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Nancy Mitford briefly attended the Slade School of Art in 1926-7, but stayed only a month. Her work was dismissed by Professor Henry Tonks, and it has become customary to assume that she had no talent for the visual arts. Nonetheless, a small oil attributed to her Slade period was sold at the Duchess of Devonshire sale in 2016 (£15,000) and is the only other painting by her we have located. Our larger picture is signed and dated 1934 and depicts blue summer flowers — rather indistinct, but perhaps bluebells, delphiniums or forget-me-nots (or a combination) with daisies — in a small porcelain vase before an ornate folding mirror in which they are reflected. It dates from a rare period of domestic happiness for Nancy. Having published two novels already, she had married Peter Rodd in December 1933 and they moved into Rose Cottage, a tiny house by the Thames at Strand on the Green, where she enjoyed furnishing it with impeccable taste on a limited budget. She evidently painted and continued to write (she published her third novel, Wigs on the Green, a facetious parody of the British Union of Fascists, in 1935). ‘The marriage was not a success. Peter, handsome and clever, was an irresponsible husband and a bore. A buccaneer by nature and incurably unfaithful, he was unable to hold down a job for more than a few weeks at a time, so that the couple were forced largely to depend on Nancy's allowance and the small income brought in by her writing’ (Selina Hastings in the Oxford DNB).

First edition of this translation and with the striking large engraved plates by Lady Diana Beauclerk. The artist was the eldest daughter of Charles Spencer, third duke of Marlborough. ‘Lady Di, as she was familiarly known, grew up at Langley Park, Buckinghamshire... There she enjoyed a happy upbringing, her taste for drawing developing early under the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ (Oxford DNB). Her second marriage to Topham Beauclerk brought her into the orbit of Edward Gibbon, David Garrick, Charles Fox, Edmund Burke, and others. Her work — often in the gothic taste — was admired by Horace Walpole who commissioned seven large panels in black wash illustrating his tragedy, The Mysterious Mother, which he hung in a special hexagonal closet at Strawberry Hill (six of them are now at the Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT). She also produced designs for Josiah Wedgwood.

A RARE COLLECTION PRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL PLATES ENGRAVED BY A PRODIGIOUSLY TALENTED FEMALE ENGRAVER. ANTOINETTE [OR ANTONIA] STELLA-BAUZONNET (1641-1676) ‘was the youngest daughter of a successful French goldsmith. Despite the restrictions placed on women in art academies at the time, her family’s prominent social status allowed her and her sisters, Françoise and Claudine, to receive private training. Her uncle Jaques Stella, a painter and close friend of Nicolas Poussin, assisted his nieces and nephew in their artwork, inviting them to live in his prestigious lodgings at the Louvre. As the youngest of the children, Antoinette was additionally trained by her older siblings. The family frequently collaborated in painting, engraving, and publishing prints. Remembered for her masterfully executed aquatints and engravings, Stella suffered a tragic fall and died in Paris at the age of 35. One of Stella’s most notable works, The Entrance of the Emperor Sigismond into Mantua, 1675, consists of 33 relief-style engravings on paper depicting crowds of men, women, children, and horses traveling alongside the emperor’ (National Museum of Women in the Arts website).

Stella-Bouzonnet’s plates were prepared after drawings by her father Antoine Stella at Mantua. They were printed first in 1675 and were later purchased and reprinted by Joubert, with Chereau, in 1787 (and probably for some time after). In this copy their imprint line giving the date of the reprint has been erased. Each of the plates has been closely cut and mounted in a large album c. 1800. It is of a type (and condition) suggesting use as an artist’s model book. Both the 1675 and 1787 editions are rare.

Bondy, p. 77; Welsh, 2012, 2788, 5569, 6481, 3312 and 5558. In the US, Worldcat lists the Wightman copy at the Morgan Library and the Adomeit copy at Indiana together with a copy at the University of Colorado.

A RARE PHOTOGRAPHIC PANORAMA OF CONSTANTINOPLE. Taken from the Serasker or Beyazit Tower beside the Ottoman Ministry of War, the 360-degree panorama first looks north-west to the Süleymaniye mosque an across the Golden Horn, and sweeps clockwise) eastwards, taking in Galata, the Grand Bazaar, the Seraglio, Scutari in the distance on the Asian shore, Hagia Sophia, Sultan Ahmet (Blue) and Beyazit mosques, before returning to the square of Ministry of War and an alternate view of Süleymaniye. Though not signed it is similar to the panoramas issues by Sebah and Joallier in the 1870s and 1880s. Constantiople panoramas are more commonly taken from the Galata tower on the northern shore of the Golden Horn, where as this one looks from the southern shore.

A RARE ‘PHYSIONOTRACE’ PORTRAIT OF THEODORE SEDGWICK (1746–1813), the American attorney, politician, and jurist who served in elected state government and as a delegate to the Continental Congress, a U.S. representative, and a senator from Massachusetts. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate from June to December 1798. He also served as the fourth speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1802 and served there for the rest of his life. He died at Boston and he is buried at Stockbridge. A portrait by Gilbert Stuart of c. 1808 is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Sedgwick studied theology and law at Yale College and though he did not graduate, he continued in his study under attorney Mark Hopkins of Great Barrington. He played a significant role in the abolitionist movement. As a relatively young lawyer, Sedgwick and Tapping Reeve had pleaded the case of Brom and Bett vs. Ashley (1781), an early ‘freedom suit’, in county court for the slaves Elizabeth Freeman (known as Bett) and Brom. Bett (also known as MumBet)was a black slave who had fled from her master, Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, because of cruel treatment by his wife. Brom joined her in suing for freedom from the Ashleys. The attorneys challenged their enslavement under the new state constitution of 1780, which held that ‘all men are born free and equal.’ The jury agreed and ruled that Bett and Brom were free. The decision was upheld on appeal by the state Supreme Court. She was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. She marked her freedom by taking the name of Elizabeth Freeman, and chose to work for wages at the Sedgwick household, where she helped rear their several children. She worked there for much of the rest of her life, buying a separate house for her and her daughter after the Sedgwick children were grown. On her death the Sedgwicks buried her at Stockbridge Cemetery in the family plot.

Before the advent of photography the physionotrace was ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes).

The miniaturist Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practised as an engraver. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada and then the United States, he established a portrait business in New York with his compatriot Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (who initially produced the drawings for Saint-Mémin to engrave). When Valdenuit returned to Paris, Saint-Mémin adopted an itinerant practice all over the East Coast states, working variously at Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Burlington. He too returned to France in 1814, having destroyed his drawing apparatus in a symbolic end to a prolific artistic enterprise which produced more than a thousand different portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.
fferent portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.

A DELIGHTFUL BOOK-FORM BOX, complete with gilt spine bands, gilt borders to the sides, four gilt bosses (one on the upper cover apparently missing) and gilt edges. The lid incorporates a mirror and the base a hand coloured print.

First edition of a rare lithographed work, pseudonymously issued, but the artist/author James O’Hara is identified in this copy with a contemporary manuscript key. The album is in the form of a graphic narrative recording a yachting cruise from Ireland to Iceland by a group of friends aboard Captain Henry’s Maroquita (a fine two-masted schooner wrecked in Holyhead harbour in 1860). While the initial scenes depict the voyage out (with predictible sea-sickness) most of the images are Icelandic vignettes, with local characters and landmarks. One shows a member of the party photographing geysers with a tripod camera — surely an early record of photography in Iceland.

The manuscript key identifies the four sailors, ‘Smith, Jones, Robinson and Brown’ as James O’Hara, Captain Sandes, Mr. Lane Fox and Captain Henry, ‘proprietor of the yacht Maroquita’ respectively. The National Library of Ireland copy bears the imprint ‘Wm. Robertson’. WorldCat locates only the copy in the Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Cologne, which has the imprint of Robertson of Sackville Street, Dublin at the foot of the title-page (where ours is blank). There is also a copy in the National Library Ireland (also with Robertson imprint). No copy found in the National Library of Iceland Catalogue.

Sir Walter Scott here makes arrangements for a short sitting with sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey before lunching with Lady Shell[e]y. In 1820 Chantrey had produced his celebrated bust of Scott. A further marble version was made in 1828, with additional sittings by Scott, as alluded to in this letter. ‘The original bust in plaster was completed in 1820. It is now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University. According to Chantrey’s ledger, five marble replicas were made, the most famous of which is that at Abbotsford. Begun in 1820, the Abbotsford bust was not completed until 1821, when Scott gave Chantrey a number of further sittings in the course of two visits to London. The Abbotsford bust remained in Chantrey’s studio from 1821 until 1828, and all the engravings and medallions representing Chantrey’s bust would appear to derive from it. Chantrey offered the bust as a gift to Lady Scott while visiting Abbotsford in May 1825... A third marble version was made for Chantrey's own studio in 1828, for which Scott gave further sittings, and which shows minor changes in the configuration of the face. This version was purchased by Sir Robert Peel in 1838 and is now in a private collection’ (Oxford DNB).

Frances Lady Shelley was one of the principal English diarists of the George III period and a close (if not always sympathetic) acquaintance of the Scotts.

Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society, Collectors Corner, catalogue 2 (1961), item 66 (£2.10).

A fine fragment from a typical median sized French thirteenth century Bible, with characteristic illumination in a good state of preservation. The text is from Saint Paul’s Epistles 1 Corinthians 15:44 to 2 Corinthians 3:4. Though in a typical Parisian style, the Bible’s origin may actually have been Avignon — it is mentioned in N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, I, 1969, p, xii, n.2, for its punctus flexus punctuation, distinctive of the Carthusians, and it belonged to the Carthusians of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. The Bible broken up by the dealer Louis Bondy, c.1961.

First published in 1886.

First published the previous year.

First edition of this rare French treatise on the origins, history and functions of a herald. The title bears a woodcut of a herald in a fleur-de-lys tabard, while the arms on the title verso are those of the dedicatee Claude Gouffier and those on the final leaf of author Jean Le Féron (1504-1570) himself. With its Middle Hill boards and pencil markings to the front pastedown this is likely to be from the collection of Sir Thomas Phillips.

A rare ‘physionotrace’ portrait of Hannah Breck (1772-1846, later Mrs James Lloyd). The original charcoal and white chalk drawing from which it was engraved is preserved at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. Hannah Breck was daughter of statesman Samuel Breck (1747-1809), and sister to Samuel Breck (1771-1862), a congressman from Pennsylvania. She married James Lloyd (1769-1831), a senator from Massachusetts, and is referred to as Anna or Hannah in various sources. Dexter, The St. Memin Collection of Portraits (New York, 1862), 24; Miles, Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America (Washington, 1994), 83.

Sole edition of this rare little handbook of ladies’ fashion and deportment. Advertised as a translation from the English, there is no obvious British analogue, though it is an interesting indication of the esteem in which British fashion was held in France at this period. The four plates are especially charming depictions of Austen-era styles. The format is very much that of contemporary almanacs with similar titles, but Le Miroir des Graces appeared only once. WorldCat lists no UK or US copies (copies at BnF, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and Kunstbibliothek Berlin only).

A well-presented Victorian monogram album containing over 1600 cut monograms. Many here are private monograms and include a large number of women’s christian names, while there are pages devoted to regiments, naval ships, clubs, associations and Oxford and Cambridge colleges. The presentation is typical, but especially neat and varied, with the cut monograms arranged on decorative pen and watercolour grounds. These are often geometric (circles and other interlocking figures are frequent) but include a gothic window, patriotic flags, mossy borders, anchors and a heraldic garter. Monogram collecting was hugely popular in the mid-nineteenth century and collections like this usually included genuine examples cut from stationery, together with others specially produced by stationery companies capitalising on the fashion. These latter monograms, evidently sold in sets can be quite elaborate, often featuring gold inks and sometimes with amusing and whimsical subjects.

Number 184 of 350 copies, signed by the artist. ‘Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale never married, and from 1903 to 1943 she lived with her sister, Kate, who was also unmarried, at 23 Elsham Road, Shepherd's Bush. She travelled often to the continent and was clearly influenced by the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century art which she saw on visits to Italy. There were further exhibitions of her works at Leighton House in 1904, with a catalogue containing appreciative remarks by George Frederic Watts, and at Dowdeswell’s in 1905 and 1909. She continued her illustrative work, which from about 1905 consisted of both line drawings and watercolours made for reproduction as half-tone colour plates. In 1911 two editions of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (de luxe and popular) were published with illustrations from her watercolours while the originals were on show in another of her one-woman exhibitions, this time at the Leicester Galleries. From that year she taught in the art school in Kensington founded by Byam Shaw’ (Oxford DNB).

Second (revised) edition (the first of 1822). Loudon’s was one of the most widely read gardening encyclopaedias of the Victorian era and ran to at east six editions, covering plant culture, botany, garden design, and an international survey and history of gardening.

One of Diane de Bournazel’s magical optical ‘peepshows’ with a window opening onto a mysterious three-dimensional scene within. It features some of the distinctive features of the artist’s much-admired artist’s books, but makes use of the peepshow form to bring added depth and perspective to her enchanted world. The paper peepshow was popularised by publishers such as Martin Engelbrecht in Munich from the middle of the eighteenth century, evidently inspired by baroque stage sets, but reached the peak of their elaboration in the Victorian era. They were either sold as toys or souvenirs or, in expanded form, were popular fairground attractions. Each of Diane de Bournazel’s peepshows is a unique creation.