38 9th June 2012 antiquarian books Repton’s ‘Red Books’ were
■ Landscape designer’s before- and-after views set top price
Ian McKay reports
£1 = $1.59
THREE of Humphry Repton’s famous ‘Red Books’, illustrated landscape garden proposals that he prepared for his clients, were among the highlights of a recent Christie’s New York sale and form the first of this week’s two principal reports. The second deals with an album of watercolour sketches recording the life and travels of an English soldier that focused international attention on an Exmouth saleroom.
Albert Small, founder of a highly
successful engineering and architectural firm, began collecting books in New York in the 1950s and his philanthropy has almost as long a history. Over the years he has given many impressive collections to public institutions, among them the many early versions of the Declaration of Independence that went to the University of Virginia in 2004. Small has also served on many civic
and cultural boards, among them the Madison Council of the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian and the National Archives. In 2009, his years of generous public service were recognised at the White House, when Barack Obama presented him with the Presidential Humanities Medal. Small’s collecting interests ranged
widely – Americana, natural history, travel, private press, etc. – but the items featured in this report resulted from a moment when, having spent hours wandering around a New York book fair, he asked a booth owner if he might sit for a moment and rest. It was there that he first saw Repton’s
landscape gardening manuals, and he eventually went on to acquire not
only the printed works but three of the famous ‘Red Books’, the watercolour- illustrated proposals prepared for potential clients. As Small was aware, only one other collector could boast more than three of these expensively produced and bound marketing tools with flaps, or overslips showing before and after views. Bid to a treble-estimate and record-
breaking $165,000 (£103,950) was the ‘Red Book’ he produced in 1798 for Gaines Hall, near the village of Perry in Huntingdonshire, a house and estate purchased the previous year by Sir James Duberly, who had also commissioned architect George Byfield to build him a house of yellow brick in the new Regency style. Repton’s
his uncle, another Oliver. It remained in the Duberly family until 1946, but during the Second World War had been requisitioned by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), who used the house as a ‘hotel’ for agents awaiting air drops into occupied Europe – at which time it was known as ‘Station 61’. As Gaynes Hall, it is now home to a food and lifestyle business. The previous auction best for one of
recommendations, illustrated with ten of his own watercolours, six of them with overslips, and three plans by another hand, included a new approach road through a park, “... for however interesting and profitable a Farm may be, it is not a proper object near such a Mansion as Gains”. Repton also mooted the erection of an entrance lodge, the removal of a stretch of water in front of the house and the building of a newly fashionable orangery to one side. Family annotations to the manuscript,
Left and above: Humphry Repton made regular use of the overlay, or overslip, to demonstrate his proposed landscape designs or alterations, and here we see the technique employed in the ‘Red Book’ he prepared for Sir James Duberly, the new owner of Gaines Hall. Sold for a record $165,000 (£103,950).
including James Duberly’s own observation, “No firs of any kind with this soil – and should on no account be planted – elms, oak and thorns grow best”, show that some, but not all, of Repton’s suggestions were followed. The house, which took its name
from the Engayne family, who had built a moated hall in the 13th century, had been previously rebuilt in the 17th century and for a time had been leased by one of Oliver Cromwell’s forebears,
“In 2009 Small’s years of generous public service were recognised at the White House”
the ‘Red Books’ would appear to be the £58,000 obtained at Bellmans in 2002 for one relating to improvements of the grounds at Wanstead House, Essex. One of two ‘Red
Books’ that Repton is known to have produced in 1790 for the banker James Sibbald, the new owner of the manor of Sunning Hill in Berkshire, sold for $85,000 (£53,550) in the Small
sale. This one, dated February 20, runs to five leaves of text, an ink and watercolour map of the property and two watercolour views, each with overslips. Repton focuses mainly on a valley in
which Sibbald wanted to create a lake, but also proposes building another house on the knoll at the top of the valley. The drawing accompanying this proposal has a note beneath it that reads: “This improvement was carried into effect and the new house built....” The third of Small’s ‘Red Books’,
sold at $95,000 (£59,850), relates to Mogenhanger, or Moggenhanger Park in Bedfordshire, the seat of Godfrey Thornton, and reunited two linked manuscripts sold in the early 1990s. The first and larger manuscript of
1792, illustrated with a map and six watercolour views by Repton – one now lacking its overslip – was sold at Christie’s
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