Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Study of Hands

William Morris by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Jane Morris

Fanny Cornforth by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

John Everett Millais - Christmas Eve

signed with monogram and dated 1887 l.l.
oil on canvas
155 by 130cm.; 61 by 51½in.
ESTIMATE 300,000 - 400,000 GBP

McLean's Gallery, London, 1888

Engraved by Robert Walker MacBeth and published by Thomas McLean in 1889

'Perhaps the deepest feeling of which he was capable appeared in the few pictures that he painted of actual winter. In his renderings of snow he displayed a degree of vigour that was peculiarly dramatic and admirably in keeping with the storm and stress of the winter season.'
A.L. BALDRY, SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS BART, PRA, HIS ART AND INFLUENCE, 1899

'There is a touch of poetry in the air, as the setting sun lights up the windows of the castle and leaves the snow cool in colour, varied with a hundred tints.'
M.H. SPIELMANN, MILLAIS AND HIS WORKS, 1898

'When the next picture (Christmas Eve, 1887) was taken up winter was already casting her mantle over the Northern hills. There was a keenness and a crispness in the air that filled sensitive southerners with thoughts of home; but for Millais, inured as he was to the rigours of the northern climate, winter had no terrors. He loved the
bracing air of the mountains, and above all, those fine still days that so often follow in the wake of St. Martin's summer, and hardly noticed as it came the change to biting frost and falling snow. With such protection as his hut afforded, he went steadily on with his work until, on Christmas Eve itself, the final touch was added to his painting a view of the old Castle of Murthly as seen from the north-west.' (John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 1899, 2 volumes, Vol. II, pp.200-203)

Among Millais' most evocative and symbolist landscape paintings, Christmas Eve depicts the garden and western façade of the fifteenth century Murthly Castle in Perthshire, the seat of Sir Archibald Douglas Stewart, 8th Baronet of Murthly. The lawns are clad in snow, only the areas beneath the majestic oaks sheltered from the snow-fall and there is a pervading sense of silence, stillness and tranquillity. The evening is drawing in and the human inhabitants have taken themselves indoors as the last glow of the sunlight reflects from the castle's windows. As they enjoy the
evening's entertainments and comforts of wood-fires and festive fare, the natural world reclaims possession of the estate. The tracks in the snow are the only signs of human activity as the grounds become the domain of the wild animals again. A group of rooks are emboldened by the absence of humans and are foraging on the lawns where hours earlier the people of the house have strolled in the chill air or perhaps where children have played with a sledge. Thus the painting conveys the contrast of human and natural activity, and of the harmony of the two. The
rooks superficially link the painting to the Blind Girl of 1854-1856 (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) and whilst these dark-plumaged birds usually symbolise death and malevolence, this symbolism is not apparent here. There are three sheets of studies for these birds in the collection of drawings at the Royal Academy (although there is some uncertainty whether they may have been drawn by his son John Guille Millais, a noted wildlife painter).

Just as Millais' famous 1853 portrait of John Ruskin (private collection) painted in the Trossachs, was produced under difficult environmental circumstances (the artist was plagued by midges), Christmas Eve was painted in adversity from a wooden hut during a cold winter amid the snow in the grounds of Murthly. The picture was painted
during Millais' seventh annual stay at Birnham Hall (also called Dalpowie) a large lodge built within the Murthly estate. The lodge was situated two miles downriver from Dunkeld, cost Millais £600 rent and was far from basic. It had running water throughout, boasted seven bedrooms, eight servant's bedrooms, a stable for six horses, kennels, fishing rights on a mile of the Tay and 6,000 acres of shootings. Millais' practice of working from a hut mirrored that of the Scottish artist Joseph Farquharson who had similarly painted several of his snow-scapes on his estate at
Finzean. The artist's son John Guille Millais recalled his father's anxiety for the safety of Christmas Eve that he had left facing the wall of the hut, following a particularly violent snowstorm one evening; 'In great anxiety he waited till
the morning, when he hastened to the spot, expecting to find the hut and its contents blown clean away. To his delight, however, there it was, standing four-square to the winds of heaven; and there, too, was the village carpenter who built it, a dear old man who lived for miles away, and, 'fearing for the hoose', had come all the way down at midnight in the blinding gale and made it thoroughly secure!' (op.cit)

Millais painted twenty-one large-scale Scottish landscapes in he last twenty-six years of his life, annually returning to Perthshire for the autumn and winter, to combine his love of painting, fishing and shooting. Although he was in his fourth decade, Millais was committed to establishing himself as a major force in Victorian landscape painting, perhaps seeking to emulate Gainsborough who had mastered both portraiture and landscape painting with equal power. As Jason Rosenfeld has explained in the Millais exhibition on 2008 which prominently included Christmas
Eve; 'That the landscapes are so rich and varied, such brilliant explorations of a single subject - Scotland - is a testament to the artist's continued singularity of vision and innovative drive... In their broad expanses, play of detail and breadth, and their enjoyment of a striking, rushing perspective, as well as their reserved tonality, these pictures represent a modern response to the environment that, like Millais's work in other genres, kept him at the forefront of innovation in the period.' (Jason Rosenfeld and Alison Smith, Millais, exhibition catalogue, 2008, p.218)

Painted a year after Bubbles (Collection of Unilever, on loan to the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight) the most famous of Millais' sentimental paintings, Christmas Eve struck a different chord, being broader and more dramatic in pathos. The contrast between the two demonstrates the duality in Millais' later oeuvre that made him arguably the most popular artist of his age.

Christmas Eve was Millais' first snowy landscape. In the early 1890s Millais painted two more large wintry landscapes, Glen Birnam of 1891 (Manchester City Art Gallery) and Blow, Blow, Though Winter Wind of 1892 (Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki) in which the hardship of winter is more apparent, in the hunched figure of the
old woman swathed against the cold in the former and the dejected pose of the young woman and the howling of the dog in the latter. Whilst the chill evening air of Christmas Eve has driven the people indoors, the natural world is not depicted as aggressive and opposed to man. The romantic medieval castle exists within the landscape and is integral to it, seemingly in harmony with its surroundings which are composed of the same almost monochromatic tones. The muted tones of Christmas Eve and the two later paintings, have a powerful effect upon the landscape in
a similar way as the dark and grey tones of another major landscape of Millais' later period Chill October of 1870 (Collection of Lord Lloyd Webber) emphasise the atmospheric beauty of nature. Unlike the idyllic landscapes that form the background of many of Millais' earlier Pre-Raphaelite paintings, the later landscapes depict a nature that is untamed and although tracks have been made through the snow in Christmas Eve they are already being threatened to be covered over by the snow-laden heavy sky above. The light is crisp and clear and close examination of the myriad tones and colours of the snow demonstrates how accomplished an artist he was.

Christmas Eve became well-known from a popular etching made by the Royal Academician Robert Walker MacBeth (1848-1910) published by Thomas McLean in 1889. At his time the picture was part of the collection of the art dealer Charles Wertheimer, whose portrait Millais painted in 1888 (Musee d'Orsay). It was bought from Wertheimer by Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson (1840-1929). Robinson was born in Cape Colony and made his fortune in mining in South Africa before moving to London in 1893 where a year later he purchased Dudley House, a large mansion in Park Lane. There was a large vaulted picture gallery at Dudley House which Robinson filled with paintings by old master artists such as Tiepolo, Piero di Cosimo, Rubens and Van Dyck and outstanding eighteenth century portraits by Reynolds, Beechey, Romney, Gainsborough and Lawrence. He regarded Millais as the successor to these eighteenth century masters and owned seven major paintings by Millais, Cherry Ripe (sold in these rooms, 1 July 2004, lot 21), Cinderella (Collection of Lord Lloyd Webber), Getting Better (sold in these rooms, 30 November 200, lot 36), Shelling Peas (private collection) and another snow scene The Mistletoe Gatherer (private collection). Robinson owned The Old Garden, a landscape painted at Murthly a year after Christmas Eve.

When Robinson returned to Cape Colony in 1910 his collection of pictures were put in storage, where they remained unseen for much of the early twentieth century. In 1958, at a time when Victorian art was little appreciated, the Robinson collection was exhibited in the Diploma Gallery at the Royal Academy where it was wellreceived
by the public. In his introduction to the catalogue Mr Le Roux Smith Le Roux wrote of the pictures; 'Whatever happens to them, they remain a monument to a remarkable man, Joseph Benjamin Robinson, and their acquisition another illustration of the aptness of the motto under his coat of arms... "I have found"' (The Robinson
Collection, exhibition catalogue, 1958, p.viii)

Edward Burne-Jones - Portrait of Georgina Burne-Jones

oil on canvas
76 by 53cm.; 30 by 21in.
ESTIMATE 400,000 - 600,000 GBP

By descent to Margaret Mackail, née Burne-Jones (1866-1953);
To her daughter, Angela Margaret Thirkell, née Mackail (1890-1961);
To her son, Lancelot Thirkell and thence by descent

Burne-Jones's hauntingly beautiful portrait of his wife Georgiana, and with their two children Margaret and Philip in the background, was begun in 1883 and then worked on at intervals. It was neither exhibited in his lifetime, nor shown at the memorial exhibition held at the New Gallery in 1898-99, presumably because it was regarded as too personal a document for public display. After the death of the sitter Georgiana Burne-Jones died in 1920 the portrait was left to Margaret, who herself died in 1953. The painting subsequently passed through three further
generations of the descendants of Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones, and is now offered for sale for the first time in its history.

The Burne-Joneses had been married in 1860, when Georgiana was twenty years old and Edward twenty-seven. The portrait therefore shows her at the age of forty-three and after twenty-three years of married life. The two children, Philip and Margaret, were born in 1861 and 1866 respectively, and were therefore twenty-two and
seventeen when the portrait was begun.

Georgiana's father, the Revd George Browne Macdonald, was a Methodist minister. Her childhood she was the fifth of eleven children (seven of whom survived into adult life) was marked by material austerity and a high-minded dismissal of anything that might be considered worldly or frivolous. Even the reading of Shakespeare was prohibited and the idea of attending a theatre unthinkable. The non-conformist upbringing that George Macdonald and his wife Hannah provided for their children, combined with frequent moves of home as their father was transferred from
place to place within the Methodist ministry, seems to have instilled a quality of self-reliance and intellectual independence in their children. Among Georgiana's sisters, Agnes ('Aggie') married the painter Edward John Poynter, while Alice and Louisa ('Louie') were respectively the mothers of the writer Rudyard Kipling and the prime minister Stanley Baldwin. The lives of these remarkable women are described in A.W. Baldwin's book The Macdonald Sisters (1960).

For Burne-Jones the purpose of portraiture was 'the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, [or] accidental' (quoted Burne-Jones, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London, and elsewhere, 1975-6, p. 76). Georgiana had an enormously strong character and was imbued with a moral quality that
made her a demanding companion. She was absolutely stalwart in her loyalty to friends and family, standing by and supporting her husband despite his more wayward disposition, and enduring his craving for female attention. She was an adoring mother and gave emotional support to a wide circle of young people who gravitated towards her and looked to her as a mentor. Without side or selfishness, she had a vast gift for friendship, allowing complete honesty of exchange combined with total discretion. Her longstanding friendship with William Morris her husband's
friend since university, was probably the most important relationship of his whole life, and one upon which she also placed great reliance. Likewise, her shrewd intelligence allowed her to spot men and women who entered, or sought to enter, the circle of friends that formed around Burne-Jones who were self-serving or otherwise not to be trusted.

Unimpressed as Georgiana was by the false prestige of social rank, or indeed by the financial advantages of a successful professional life, she observed with dismay her husband's inability to resist the beguilement of worldly acclaim notably on the occasion of his acceptance of a baronetcy. As Burne-Jones once radical in his political views became increasingly Tory, she more progressively embraced socialism, pacifism and feminism. A project designed to improve life for the London working classes was the establishment of the South London Art Gallery, and to which she devoted time and energy, and which was the practical fulfilment of John Ruskin's precept that works of art should be available for all to look at and study.
Georgiana Burne-Jones was a woman of artistic sensibility. In her youth she had learnt how to engrave wood blocks, collaborating with Elizabeth Siddal on a projected book of illustrated fairy tales. She sang and played the piano, to the delight of her friends and especially to Burne-Jones himself. She frequently served as a model for her husband in his imaginative subjects (most tellingly for the 1860 watercolour Clara von Bork (Tate Gallery), in which her personality was ideally matched to that of the caring and sweet-hearted figure represented, in contrast with the sinister and mendacious Sidonia von Bork, the subject of the pendant, for whom the model was Rossetti's mistress of the late 1850s, Fanny Cornforth). Among Georgiana's great achievements was the two-volume biography of her husband that she wrote after his death and which remains a vital source of information and insights, and in which she achieves extraordinary truthfulness and candour without ever betraying friends or family.

Although not conventionally beautiful, her physical appearance was a delight to those who loved her. As Walford Graham Robertson wrote, 'the quiet in those wonderful eyes of clearest grey was the centre of the strange stillness'
that friends felt when they visited the Burne-Joneses at their home The Grange in Fulham (Time Was: The Reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson, 1931, p. 75). Burne-Jones himself well knew the power of his wife's formidable personality. As he wrote to May Gaskell: 'It makes me happy that Georgie welcomes you some day come to see her for her own sake she is the wittiest company, and very pious I say pious because all things are serious to her only she is bitter upon folly she is not a Christian any more and yet she hates to be approached except on bended knees' (quoted Josceline Dimbleby, A Profound Secret, London, 2004, p. 94). As Penelope
Fitzgerald wrote of the Burne-Joneses' marriage, 'Georgie, as Ned well knew, bore the burden of everything' (Edward Burne-Jones, London, 1985, p. 181), and in keeping with the unspoken dependence that he felt for her Burne-Jones provided an image of Georgiana that speaks of her sense of purpose. The solemnity of her expression
and the unflinching gaze with which she returns the artist's inspection of her, may be regarded as indicating as the Burne-Joneses' great grand-son Lance Thirkell said of it 'something of the unhappiness of being the artist's longsuffering
wife, which he perhaps did not see when he was painting it' (Jan Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, London, 1985, p. 334). Whether in his heart he acknowledged his transgressions on occasions he allowed himself to be drawn into intense relationships with other women the portrait was undoubtedly intended as a token of his love for Georgiana.

She is shown at half-length and with her hands and forearms resting on a table or shelf that forms a parapet in the foreground. She is dressed in a dark coat the lustrous texture of which is seen in the outline of the sleeve. At the neck and cuffs, a simple fringe of lace appears, but otherwise her clothes are of the utmost simplicity. She appears to wear no jewellery; the ring finger of her left hand is obscured by the book she is holding, so the wedding-ring that she may be presumed to be wearing cannot be seen. Her dark hair is parted at the centre and carefully drawn to the back of her head, as it had been in the photograph taken of her at the age of sixteen, twenty-seven years earlier (see Burne-Jones, Georgiana, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, London, 1904, two volumes, I, illustrated opposite p. 134). The portrait was almost certainly done at The Grange; a dark coloured internal wall forms the immediate backdrop to the figure, while on the right a flight of three steps leads into a room beyond more brightly lit than that occupied by Georgiana. In this further space are shown the figures of Philip and Margaret he seated at an
easel and with palette and mahl-stick in his left hand; she standing behind in a flowing white dress as she watches her brother at work. This device whereby a glimpse is given into a space beyond and in which figures are represented on a much smaller scale may have been derived from Burne-Jones's study of sixteenth-century Italian art which had become important to him in the course of successive visits to Italy and which he took his opportunity to study in collections at home. John Christian has linked the portrait of Georgiana with a portrait by Giulio Romano
of c. 1531, then and now at Hampton Court, (traditionally said to show Isabella d'Este but recently claimed as a portrait of Margherita Palaeologa) (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and elsewhere, Edward Burne-Jones Victorian Artist-Dreamer, 1998-9, exhibition catalogue, p. 260), which like the Burne-Jones portrait has a subsidiary composition at the upper right showing much smaller full-length figures. A further suggestion is that the portrait may owe something to Burne-Jones's interest in Spanish Baroque art, which was the object of fascination among
progressive British painters in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A possible prototype for the division of the composition into two distinct parts is Velasquez's Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (National Gallery), of
1618, a work which was in turn dependent on a Flemish artistic tradition which permitted figures to be treated on dramatically differing scales, and with noticeable varied degrees of finish, to be combined in a single composition.
Unambiguous as a coded message of love on the part of the artist for the sitter, but also perhaps an admission of his failings as a husband, was the book that Georgiana holds. This is John Gerard's Great Herball, or Generale Historie of Plantes, published in 1597. Burne-Jones consulted this source when devising his series of watercolours exploring the mythological association of flower names which came to be called The Flower Book (British Museum), also made in the 1880s. In the portrait Georgiana holds the book open to show the illustration of a heartsease or
pansy, while resting on the page is a blue flower of the same plant. Gerard says of the heartsease that it 'groweth in fields and in gardens also, and that oftentimes of itselfe: it is more gallant and beautiful than any of the wild ones'.

According to the traditional language of flowers, the heartsease is regarded as symbolical of loving thoughts and memories, and of undying affection, even if with associations of sadness and loss. Burne-Jones's choice of this particular flower emblem may also have been influenced by John Ruskin's book Proserpina Studies of Wayside Flowers, issued in parts from 1879 onwards and which he and Georgiana must certainly have read and probably also discussed with the author. Ruskin described particular flowers on the basis of his own observations, writing of the variety in question: 'The wild heart's-ease of Europe [is] not larger than a violet, but perfectly formed, and firmly set in all its petals [and] quite one of the most lovely things that Heaven has made'. In his more general discussion of the genus Viola, Ruskin identifies the Shakespearean heroines 'who love simply, and to the death; as distinguished from the greater natures in whom earthly Love has its due part, and no more', and in a passage which surely must have reflected his friendship with both Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones and his appreciation of what each meant to the other he concluded: 'Practically, in daily life, one often sees married women as good as saints; but rarely, I think, unless they have a good deal to bear from their husbands' (Ruskin Works, volume XXV, pp. 416, 420).

An entry in Burne-Jones's studio work-list records that in 1883 he 'began [the] portrait of Georgie with Phil and Margaret in the background'. Georgiana herself, in her biography of her husband, states that it remained unfinished.

The area of the composition on which he might perhaps have intended to work further is that in which are placed the figures of Margaret and Philip, which are relatively lightly sketched, but effectively so and in meaningful contrast to the immaculately finished figure of Georgiana. CSN

John Melhuish Strudwick - In the Golden Days

signed and inscribed with the artist's address on an old label attached to the reverse
oil on canvas
65 by 45cm.; 26 by 18in.
ESTIMATE 200,000 - 300,000 GBP

London, New Gallery, Summer Exhibition, 1907, no.12

Steven Kolsteren, 'The Pre-Raphaelite Art of John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937)', The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies, vol. I: 2, Fall 1988, p.8 and 12 no. 3 in the checklist of paintings by Strudwick (marked 'present whereabouts unknown')

'How sad it were for Arthur, should he live,
To sit once more within the lonely hall,
And miss to hear high talk of noble deeds
As in the golden days before thy sin.'
TENNYSON, IDYLLS OF THE KING

Of all the painters who formed the late nineteenth-century manifestation of Romantic Pre-Raphaelitism, a movement which owed much to the example of Edward Burne-Jones and more remotely to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Melhuish Strudwick is the most remarkable. Because he painted so slowly, and in such a meticulous style
which he never attempted to adapt or simplify so as to be less technically exacting, he is represented by a small but precious corps of works. The present painting which was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1907, his last exhibit there, exemplifies the essential qualities of refinement and other-worldliness of his art. Strudwick was preoccupied by the subject of passing time or of an imagined golden age, from Passing Days of 1878 (sold in these rooms, 10 November 1981, lot 39), The Gentle Music of a Bygone Day of 1889 (private collection) and When Apples were
Golden and Songs were Sweet, But Summer had Passed Away of 1906 (Manchester City Art Gallery). As Steven Kolsteren has pointed out; 'Strudwick's private dreamworld is not a perfect hiding place, being continually affected by time and decay' (Steven Kolsteren, 'The Pre-Raphaelite Art of John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937)', The
Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies, vol. I: 2, Fall 1988, p.8)

The subject shows three beautiful female figures in a medieval chamber at the bottom of a staircase. On the left sits a damsel clad in rose-coloured robes playing a type of archaic lute, whilst beside her, dressed in green is a second girl holding a song-book. A third girl, dressed in a darker red robe, lifts a veil from her ear and stoops forward to listen to the music played by the other two figures. At the side of the girl dressed in green are pale wild roses growing over a knight's shield, reminiscent of Burne-Jones' Briar Rose series of pictures painted in the 1880s
(Buscot Park, Oxfordshire). The title is taken from Tennyson's Idylls of the King from the part of the poem where Guinevere talks of her regret of her sins and desire to return to the idyllic time of her youth. The central figure dressed in green may therefore depict the young Guinevere, attended by two of her companions before she had met Arthur or Lancelot. The crown depicted on the bronze salver behind her and the lions rampant and Fleur-de-Lis on the heraldry probably relate to King Arthur whilst the knight carrying a golden sword and being crowned by angels, depicted in the panel above the window, is clearly the king her future husband holding Excalibur. The wild roses possibly relate to the illicit love of Lancelot.

In the Golden Days contains one of the central themes of the English Aesthetic Movement, the sense of sound evoked by the musical subject. The work follows in a similar vein to Summer Songs of 1901 (sold in these rooms, 13 December 2005, lot 23) which similarly depicts a group of girls making music. Strudwick had also painted a
series of various St Cecilia subjects in the late 1890s (Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead and elsewhere). As John Christian has written, 'Like Burne-Jones, Strudwick loved to paint compositions in which a mood of wistful sadness is evoked by a group of female figures playing musical
instruments' (The Last Romantics- The Romantic Tradition in British Art- Burne Jones to Stanley Spencer, exhibition catalogue, 1989 (under the discussion of Strudwick's 1897 St Cecilia), p.94).A crucial formative experience in Strudwick's move towards a style of art of technical refinement and aesthetic subtlety occurred in the
early 1870s when he was employed as a studio assistant first by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and then by Burne-Jones. Strudwick's works were repeatedly rejected by the Royal Academy and his professional prospects were uncertain. However, in 1876 his painting Song without Words (sold in these rooms, 8 June 1993, lot 22) did
gain admission (it was in fact his only contribution to the Royal Academy summer exhibitions in his entire career).

The work caused a great stir among those who were curious to know how such a quaint and yet technically demanding work could have been undertaken by an otherwise unheard of artist. According to George Bernard Shaw, who wrote the article about Strudwick which is the principal source of information about the artist, the sale of
Song without Words marked the critical turning-point in the painter's fortunes. He 'promptly hired a studio for himself; and since that time his vocation as an artist has never been challenged. There is no such thing as an unsold picture by Strudwick; and so the story of his early struggles may be said to end there' ('J.M. Strudwick', Art Journal, 1891, pp.97-101).

In reply to the accusation that Strudwick was merely an imitator of an historical style of painting, Shaw wrote: 'There is nothing of the fourteenth century about his work except that depth of feeling and passion for beauty which are common property to all who are fortunate enough to inherit them'. His paintings are highly sophisticated expressions of an anti-Utilitarian counter-culture in the late Victorian world, and were esteemed for their complete indifference to all that was modern, or indeed distinctly of any age.

William Holman Hunt - Homeward Bound

Victorian &Edwardian Art, Including Masterpieces
London 16 Dec 2010, 2:00 PM L10133


signed with monogram l.l.
watercolour with traces of pencil and scratching out
25.5 by 17.5cm.; 10 by 7in.
Purchased from the artist by Wilhelm Augustus Rudolf Lehmann, March 1873 (together with Interior of the Mosque Ar Sakara)

London, Old Watercolour Society, 1871, no.256

Homeward Bound was painted in 1869 and sent to England in the autumn of the following year to be exhibited at the Old Watercolour Society, as the artist's letter of 12 October to A.W. Hunt reveals: 'I have lately sent home a couple of water colour drawings and I wish to give them to be mounted and framed to a safe man.... [They] are one a view in the interior of the Mosque Ar Sakhara here the other a Moonlight at Sea.' Judith Bronkhurst has suggested that the picture was painted during Hunt's August 1869 voyage from Brindisi to Jaffa. This is confirmed
by Stephen's review in the Athenaeum of 13 May 1871, 'The Pathless Waters ... a rapidly-made sketch of the sea and moonlight as apparent from the deck of a steamer, is ... remarkable for luminosity and richness of colour; though not nearly so complete, it is preferable to the former (Interior of the Mosque As Sakara) in espect of solidity.

The moon and clouds about her face are very fine'. The Art-Journal commented: 'Holman Hunt again attempts to paint impossibilities. In "The Pathless Waters", he strives to seize on a lovely phenomenon of sky and sea, familiar to all who have voyaged on the Mediterranean. The moon makes for herself a clear path through clouds which crown, or rather encircle, her head with a halo of iridescent light. The sea beneath shines as burnished silver.

This poetic aspect of nature probably cannot be translated into a picture. We may commend then the attempt while we pardon the failure'.

Homeward Bound and Interior of the Mosque Ar Sakara (Sotheby's, Thornton Manor, Wirral, from the collection of Lord Leverhulme, 27 June 2001, lot 395) were bought by the portrait painter Rudolf Lehmann (1819-1905), to whom Hunt wrote on 10 March 1873: 'Thank you for your kind note which encloses the cheque for £204/15 ... You are
more than prompt in paying me before the works are sent home: this however shall be very soon. I am delighted that you have got them. I feel satisfied to a high degree that I withdrew them from sale until now for so good a fate as this in store for them'. Hunt was friends with Rudolf Lehmann and his brother Frederick, a noted amateur violinist and partner in an engineering firm who was also a patron of Albert Moore and friend of Millais, Leighton and the writer William Wilkie Collins. Later in the nineteenth century Homeward Bound passed into the collection of the
accountant Edward Frederick Quilter, son of the eminent stock-broker and art collector Sir William Cuthbert Quilter M.P. and brother of the composer Roger Quilter. Among the Victorian masterpieces in Cuthbert Quilter's collection
were Rossetti's La Bella Mano, Burne-Jones' Green Summer, Mariamne by Waterhouse, Cymon and Iphigenia by Leighton, The Last Muster by Herkomer, Joan of Arc by Millais and, most relevantly, one of Holman Hunt's most famous paintings The Scapegoat.

Judith Bronkhurst has drawn comparison between Homeward Bound and Moonlight at Salerno of 1868 in the depiction of moonlight on the ocean, the former depicting; 'the full moon (indicated by bare paper) [that] illuminates the surrounding indigo sky and pale turquoise/green clouds, and casts a bright pinkish gleam on the sea in the middle distance. The horizontal banding in the left of the drawing is achieved with great economy of means the moonlight areas are hints of ochre highlighting on bare paper.'

We are very grateful to Judith Bronkhurst for her kind assistance in cataloguing this picture.

John Everett Millais - Original Drawing for "Christ in the House of His Parents

Original Drawing for "Christ in the House of His Parents" by Sir John Everett Millais Bt PRA (1829-96). 1850. Pencil on paper. Source: Millais, I, 76. This sketch, which has only four figures, omits John the Baptist as well as the ladder and dove in the background.

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/millais/drawings/15.html

William Holman Hunt - Bianca