ART â013 ARTHUR HUGHES & THE PRE-RAPHAELITES Archive relating to the Pre-Raphaelite artist,...

ART – ARTHUR HUGHES & THE PRE-RAPHAELITES Archive of material relating to the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Arthur Hughes (1832-1915), assembled by art historian and authority on Hughes, Dr Leslie Cowan, comprising: i) Group of 17 small sketches, mostly if not all by Arthur Hughes, including studies for April Love, The Mower, Home from Work, The Long Engagement, and others including female figures, children (one possibly for The King's Orchard), male figures (one possibly for The Guarded Bower), family groups, horses etc., pen and ink, pencil, on various papers, some mounted where removed from album, dust-staining, marks and small tears, various sizes, 174 x 108mm. and smaller, [n.d.]; ii) Group of six autograph letters signed ('Arthur Hughes'), two to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the first denying his accusation that Rossetti had encouraged an '...immoral tone...' in Swinburne, ending '...for the Woolner, Hunt, Rossetti, severance I think it a greater dissolution than the Old Round Table...', in the second, pleased that he is working on '...The Calf picture...' and the difficulties of finding him a smock for his model ('...I went last evening to find a man I heard was using such, but he was away...'); three to William Michael Rossetti, indebted to him for publishing his sonnets in The Germ and sending photographs of a Rossetti drawing; and one other, 18 pages, dust-staining, creased, 8vo, Putney, Kew Green, Wallington and elsewhere, [31 December 1866?] to 8 July [18]93; with further correspondence from Georgiana Burne-Jones to Hughes (3), F.W.L. Adams to William Michael Rossetti (7), various to Hale White including one from Christie, Manson & Woods confirming that Hughes' Home from Sea was sold to a Mr McAndrew in 1892, etc., c. 44 pages, dust-staining, creased, 8vo, Rottingdean, Ventnor, London and elsewhere, 6 July 1890 to 3 March 1907; iii) Commonplace book kept by Hughes and others, including transcriptions of poems by Ruskin, Thackeray, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti ('Dreamland') and Dante Gabriel Rossetti ('Sister Helen'), illustrated with c.5 small sketches in pen and ink and crayon, one seemingly relating to his work The First Easter, another to Dreamland, c.86 leaves, some leaves loose, dust-staining, original calf, worn with loss to head of spine, 8vo (180 x 112mm.), [n.d.]; iv) Group of 15 photographs, including a later print of Mrs William Morris (Jane Burden) by John Robert Parsons, given to Arthur Hughes (original taken at Cheyne Walk, 1865); Arthur Hughes in his studio; various portrait photographs and interiors, etc., 246 x 195mm. and smaller, late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century Footnotes: ARCHIVE OF MATERIAL RELATING TO THE PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTER ARTHUR HUGHES, INCLUDING SKETCHES AND AUTOGRAPH LETTERS. According to Stephen Wildman in his introduction to Hughes' catalogue raisonné, Arthur Hughes was '...the best of the younger followers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood...' (Leonard Roberts, Arthur Hughes, His Life & Works, 1997). Letters and papers from Hughes are scarce as, after his death in 1915, his daughter Emily undertook an '...appallingly ruthless purge of personal papers...' (Roberts, p.9). The present archive was assembled by Leslie Cowan, a great champion of Hughes, who prepared an unpublished comprehensive dissertation on the artist and curated a major exhibition of Hughes at Cardiff and Leighton House in 1971. Despite being seen by contemporaries and critics as one who never quite fulfilled his early promise, Hughes is nevertheless admired for a few major works which epitomise Pre-Raphaelite themes and techniques. Some of the quick small sketches in our collection can be identified as relating to works such as The Mower (Cat. Rais. no.56), Home from Work (no.50) and The Long Engagement (no.15) and his commonplace book includes what appear to be studies for the fallen figure in The First Easter (no.298.4) and the reclining female in Dreamland (no.301), a painting based on Christina Rossetti's poem which Hughes has inscribed in the volume. Hughes was close to the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, as can be seen in one of the two letters to D.G. Rossetti, which reveals him on the quest for a smock to be worn by the model in Rossetti's seminal work, Found. Provenance: Dr Leslie Cowan (1929-2021); thence by descent to the present owner. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing