Photography, from Fox Talbot to the 21st century, is the theme of the first part of Dominic Winter’s auction on Wednesday 7 October.
A highlight is a partially completed photograph album that comes by descent from the family of Mary Ryan. Found begging with her mother at Putney, Julia Margaret Cameron took young Mary into her Freshwater household, where she went on to become one of Cameron’s most photographed muses. The album features three known photographs by Cameron – Annie Philpot (‘my first success’), a portrait of Henry Taylor and a tableau of ‘The May Queen’, featuring Mary Ryan. There are two further photographs attributed to Cameron, the first the face of a young man believed to be Charlie Hay Cameron, the other more speculatively attributed to Cameron, showing Mary Ryan in a gown, (the same one she is seen wearing in the Romeo and Juliet photographs, with her fiancé/husband Sir Henry Cotton in 1867), in an intimate and relaxed pose with another unidentified young woman.
A personal album of Frederick Hollyer provides another sale highpoint. Containing 106 platinum print portraits of notable people of the day, c. 1870s/1890s, the sitters include William Morris, May Morris, Aubrey Beardsley, Edward Burne-Jones, Ellen Terry, Thomas Hardy, George Frederic Watts, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, J. M. Barrie, Walter Crane, Andrew Lang, Jean Sibelius, and many others. The album with Hollyer’s name and addressed stamped to the upper cover comes by descent from the family of his much younger second wife Eleanor Hollyer.
Other notable photography lots include a rare group of four rare dilute albumen prints of British royalty by Leonida Caldesi, 1857, an assisted self-portrait of Lewis Carroll, 1875, an archive of 120 photographs showing the construction of the Forth Bridge, 1884-1886, and a group of 6 wood-framed dry-plate collodion glass lantern slides by brothers James and Robert Mudd of Manchester, c. 1857-1861. From the 20th century is a group of photographs relating to the Palestine Emergency of 1947, and an album of 101 platinum prints of Moscow and environs, from the early 1900s.
The photography theme continues with the Andrew Farmer North Devon Collection, the largest such collection in private hands. Andrew was a noted collector of North Devon imagery for over 40 years, with a particular interest in Lynton and Lynmouth. Across the 57 lots are tens of thousands of images, comprising photographs, stereoviews, postcards, watercolours, drawings and prints. Prized above all is a rare personal album by early West Country photographer John Wheeley Gough Gutch, containing 25 lightly albumenised salt prints of Lynmouth, from July & August 1856.
The second half of the 288-lot sale comprises postcards, posters, autographs, documents and related paper ephemera.
Digital catalogues in various formats are available on the website www.dominicwinter.co.uk.
Public viewing daily on Monday/Tuesday 5/6 October, 9.30-5.30, and day of sale from 9am; all other times by appointment.
For further information and enquiries please contact Chris Albury chris@dominicwinter.co.uk | 01285 860006
Dominic Winter Auctioneers, Mallard House, Broadway Lane, South Cerney, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 5UQ
