| | | | | | | | Document | Sale Catalog Br-528 | |
| Auction House | Snell (William) -- from catalog: Mr. Snell | | Sale Location | Premises, the West Side of Leicester Square, London, England, UK | | Seller(s) | from catalog: The Marquis of Thomond | | Lugt Number | 7293 | | No. of Painting Lots | 57 | | Notes | This sale of household furniture and pictures belonging to the Marquess of Thomond took place in the owner's residence in Leicester Square. These were the same quarters once occupied by Joshua Reynolds, whose niece and heir Mary Palmer was Thomond's second wife. Farington (Diary, Aug.14, 1807) devotes more than the usual amount of space to the sale, giving some of the results and commenting that the audience consisted largely of dealers. The chief attraction of the sale was the provenance of the pictures from Reynolds himself. It can be demonstrated, however, that some of the pictures had been acquired by the owner sometime after his marriage to Mary Palmer and so had never belonged to Reynolds. They were, in any case, largely the dregs of the collection and generally consisted of works that had failed to sell in 1795 when the majority of Reynolds's pictures had been dispersed. Prices at the present sale were reasonably good, however. A picture of Samson and Delilah, supposedly by Van Dyck but recognized already by Farington as a copy, brought £68.5, the highest price for any painting in the sale. (Reynolds had originally paid £300 for it on the advice of Caleb Whitefoord.) A sketch or replica of Reynolds's Allegorical Figure of Theory, painted for the ceiling of the Royal Academy, brought £63. (Neither picture can now be traced.) Both Farington and the one extant copy of the catalogue record that the pictures fetched a total of £297.3.6, while the unsold lots amounted to £426.6.0. For the most part we do not know which of the lots found buyers. The title page of the catalogue describes the sale as lasting two days, ending on Aug.12, a Wednesday. But an annotation inside the catalogue confirms Farington's note that the pictures were actually sold on Friday, Aug.14. (B. Fredericksen) | | Catalog Location(s) | VAL [photocopy in Provenance Index Sales Files] Annot. with all prices, a few notes and the buyer of lots 37 and 38. | | See Also | Sale Contents | | | Art Sales Catalogues Online | | | |
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