Antiques Trade Gazette 39
his marketing plan
of Roxburghe, on the covers of the contemporary red morocco gilt binding, it sold at a record $30,000 (£18,900). A second example, a somewhat
less well-presented and preserved ex- Massachusetts Horticultural Society copy that made $11,000 at Sotheby’s New York in 2008 was here sold at $13,000 (£8190) this time. An 1803 first (in period but rebacked
and repaired russia gilt) of his second treatise, Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, sold at $9500 (£5985) and an 1806 first of his Enquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening..., an unillustrated work that may be seen as a follow-up to the Observations..., sold at $1300 (£820), but the most highly valued of the printed Reptons failed to sell. This was Humphry Repton’s own copy
Above left and right: before and after views of a proposed lake from the 1790 ‘Red Book’ produced by Humphry Repton for James Sibbald’s country seat, Sunning Hill in Berkshire. Sold for $85,000 (£53,550).
in London in 1992 for £10,000, while the second, comprising just two text leaves and three watercolours, inscribed by Repton to Thornton, “...a few pages to be added to the Red book”, was sold for £3200 at Sotheby’s in the following year, as part of the Alan G. Thomas library. Sir John Soane had already been
commissioned to draw up plans for alterations to the house (work that continued intermittently for over 20 years), but Repton, when asked to suggest improvements for the grounds, found it difficult “to affix its true character, it is too large and too much ornamented for a farm house, while it is too small and too humble for a country- seat and its distance from the capital is too great to permit its being called a Villa. I shall therefore consider it an occasional sporting seat”.
Repton also had trouble with his
proposed views from the dining and drawing rooms, owing to what he called the unavoidable disposition of those rooms, “where Genius is confined to altering an old house, instead of having full latitude to plan a new one”. Moggenhanger Park today offers
a restaurant and conference facilities among its 21st century attractions. These ‘Red Books’ all contained
examples of Repton’s celebrated trade card, engraved for him by Thomas Medland in 1788 and showing him standing by a theodolite, while behind him lounges an assistant with a measuring rod, and in the middle distance labourers are seen working by a lake. In the distance a tower rises from heavily-wooded slopes. An example of this famous card sold at $700 (£440). Among the books in Small’s collection
was a 1794 first of his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening, illustrated with 16 aquatinted plates, ten of them hand- coloured and all bar two with overslips. Bearing the arms of John Ker, 3rd Duke
of Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening...., a work that he produced in tandem with his son, the architect John Adey Repton, who was responsible for the section on Grecian and Gothic architecture. Containing his notes on the letter that had accompanied the dedication copy to the Prince Regent, and with a tipped-in letter relating to an outstanding account with the Boydells’ publishing firm, it had been valued at $40,000-60,000. Other less familiar printed Repton
items included a lot offering three issues of The Polite Repository of Pocket Companion from the years 1793-97, an almanac to which Repton contributed tiny watercolour views in the years 1790- 1809. This sold at $3500 (£2205). Sold at $1100 (£695) was a large-
paper, 1804 first of Old Whims & Miscellanies, the two volumes containing Repton’s five-act play, Old Whims, or two at a Time, various pieces of humorous verse and 11 essays and comical prose works, among them On dissipation, On cheating, and Voyage to the Moon.
Bibliophile Sales Monthly Sales held in Godalming
Now Welcoming Consignments
Contact Clive Moss:
cmoss@bloomsburyauctions.com
Middleton (Charles) The Architect and Builder’s Miscellany… 8vo, For the Author, 1799. Sold for £670 including buyer’s premium
Baily.- Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, vol.1-68 8vo, 1860-97. Sold for £1,800 including buyer’s premium
Baverstock House, 93 High Street, Godalming, Surrey GU7 1AL t +44 (0) 1483 423567 f +44 (0) 1483 426392
godalming@dnfa.com www.dnfa.com/godalming
Free Live Online Bidding Wilde on camera
Above: this large format photo-portrait of Oscar Wilde was taken in New York by Napoleon Sarony during Wilde’s US tour of 1882. Signed and inscribed “rien n’est vrai, que le beau” (a quote from Alfred de Musset) it sold for £10,000 in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of May 15. The photograph below is inscribed to Arthur Fish, a long- suffering assistant editor during his 1887-89 editorship of The Woman’s World, who was often required to write literary and other notes when Wilde simply could not be bothered. It made £11,000 at Bonhams last November.
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