Saturday 24 September 2016

The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27 [Part I] -- Addendum

National Gallery of Art,
Washington DC 2013.130.1 [Source]
In the first post on the The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27, here, I made no comment about the first item described in this image:

I could picture the initial in my mind's eye, having seen it in a Sotheby's catalogue, but could not remember which one. Today I found it: it was sold on 9 July 1973, lot 14, and was bought by Ian Woodner for £13,000; it was not part of the Woodner bequest to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, in 1991, but was given in 2013.

Combining information from the 1973 description; the description of a sister-cutting, sold at Sotheby's, 17 June 1997, lot 30; and the NGA website, we can reconstruct the provenance as follows:
  • Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence: cut from fol.31 of the 3rd volume of a 4-volume Gradual (now Florence, Bibl. Laurenziana, Cod.Cor.3), written in 1409 for the Camaldolese monastery and illuminated in two stages in the first and second quarters of the century. [One of the other cuttings from the same volume is here; further information is here].
  • Probably owned by William Young Ottley (1771-1836), who "brought to England" the sister-cutting sold in 1997, which had been "stolen by the French at the Revolution".
  • Samuel Woodburn (1783-1853), London picture-dealer; sold at Christie's, 25 May 1854, lot 982.
  • Henry George Bohn (1796-1884), bookseller and publisher; sold at Christie's, 23 March 1885, lot 535.
  • Sir Herbert Jekyll (1846-1932), by 1903 (see below); lent in 1926-27 by Agnes, Lady Jekyll (1861-1937) to the BFAC exhibition.
  • Mrs Humphrey Cox; sold at Sotheby's, 7 September 1973, lot 14.
  • Ian Woodner (1903-1990), New York; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York, 1990; gift to the NGA, 2013.
It appears that it was exhibited at yet another BFAC exhibition, in 1903, where it was no.42, apparently one of only two illuminated manuscripts (but it would have been almost impossible to deduce this from the brief and vague description, if it were not for a reference in the 1973 auction catalogue):

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