Samuel Shelley (1750-1808) - 72 drawings from sketchbook
We are delighted to have for sale a collection of over 70 drawings by Samuel Shelley (1750-1808). It is rare to have such a large collection by the artist and many are sketches and studies for some of Shelley's important works.
The portfolio they come from is one of a few volumes of drawings by the artist, seven of which are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and various other drawings are dispersed across the collections of the British Museum, the Royal Academy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale Center for British Art, and the Wichita Museum. They all are numbered in the same fashion as our drawings which helps to show these are portfolio works by Shelley.
Our set comes from a collection that has the original front and backboard for the portfolio with the following description of the contents:
'Shelley (Samuel) 1750-1808, Artists Sketch Book, A Collection of 241 Studies in Pen and Bistro, Pencil and Crayon &c., consisting of Illustrations to the Poets, including Milton, Prior, Shakespeare, Wharton's Odes to Fancy, Don Quixote, Pegasus, between Tragedy and Comedy, Aldysus and Antigone, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Henry and Emma, Cupid and Psyche, Book illustrations, Portraits of Ladies &c., the whole mounted in a an old scrap book on dark grey paper, 4to, hf. bnd. (1 cover loose).'
Our set contains landscape and architectural studies as well as sketches for portraits, subject pictures and genre scenes. Landscape and architectural studies, a rarity in Shelley’s oeuvre (with the only other example – an ink and watercolour drawing – at the Met), are the subject of at least seven drawings in the portfolio including one titled ‘Picturesque Cottage, St Margarets Bay, Dover’.
In addition, there are a number of studies linked to Shelley’s miniatures exhibited at the Royal Academy, as well as his other drawings in various collections.
Drawings included:
- Portrait of Zaide
- Saint Anthony
- Fair Days
- Macbeth saluted by witches
- 4 Graces portrait
- Calypso
- Cherubs and horses
- Love held asleep in the bosom of hope
- 2 drawings Mrs Amelia Caroline Hadfield
- Muse of Pegasus
- Pair of thatched cottage studies
- Landscape of cottage by river
- Study of castle (likely the Tower of London)
- Study of cottage at St Margaret's Bay, Dover
- 2 drawings Portrait of Mrs Ruskin (or Ruspin?)
- Love's complaint to time
- Christ preaching
- Study of trees
- Studies of Philoclea and Arcadia
- Calypso lamenting departure of Ulysses
- Study of Abelard and Eloisa
- Neptune rescuing Amymone
- Along with other portrait and genre studies
Medium: pencil and pen and ink on paper, various sizes. Note the sheets are loose and not mounted or framed. They will come in a folio.
Provenance: Samuel Shelley's Sketchbook; Private Collection, U.K.
Condition report: please see photographs for examples, each sheet has some time staining and some have paper stuck on the back from previous mountings.
We would like to thank Pola Durajska for her help in cataloguing our works by Shelley.