Books From Painter John Singer Sargent's Collection to Auction

John Singer Sargent’s family collection including a Laurie Lee archive will go under the hammer at Chorley's on September 15.

Born in Florence to American parents, John Singer Sargent spent most of his life in Europe where he was acclaimed for his portraits which captured the glamour of Belle Époque Europe and the ‘Golden Age’. Chorley’s Auctioneers will offer books, furniture, carpets, works of art and silver from the estate of John Singer Sargent’s grand-niece Jemima Pitman featuring items from a family collection which have been passed down from John Singer Sargent including signed volumes by artists Augustus John, John Piper and Rex Whistler.

Leading the literary section of the auction is an archive of more than 550 volumes relating to British master builder Thomas Cubitt who re-developed huge areas of London with a distinctive classical revival style in the 19th century, including Bloomsbury. archive features primary material on the development of the firm, their business and land development from the 1830s onwards (estimate: £30,000-£40,000).

The auction also features the archive of Sir Charles Rouse Boughton (1747-1821), a British colonial administrator in India with the East India Company. There are several lots of manuscripts and letters by the very well connected Boughton who in later life took on political roles in England, but maintained a lifelong interest in India. 

The archive (estimate: £7,000-£10,000) traces Boughton’s personal life, scholarly interest in India and East India company work including a diary and letter book and a broad survey of Bengal. Alongside this manuscript archive, Chorley’s will also be offering Rouse-Boughton’s handwritten manuscript for his work on the landed property of Bengal as well as correspondence with Edmund Burke and other material relating to India and the East India company in the late 18th and early 19th century.

The Laurie Lee material (estimate: £4,000-£6,000) represents an important literary and Cotswold cultural archive of 107 items, comprising first editions, signed and association copies, and rare publications, almost all first edition, first impression copies, many signed or inscribed by the author of Cider with Rosie.

Highlights include:

• an original 168-page BBC 2 production screenplay for Hugh Whitemore’s 1971 television adaptation of Cider with Rosie, the only known example in currently in private hands
• first edition, first impression copies of Cider with Rosie, and The Voyage of Magellan, inscribed by Lee to the journalist and historian Donald McCormick
• books from Lee's personal library including Stephen Potter’s Some Notes on Lifemanship inscribed to Lee, Kathleen Raine’s The Year One and Other Poems inscribed “one exile to another”, and Lee’s signed copy of The Poet’s Sphere, retaining its pressed flower.
• scarce works including City of the Sun, one of only 150 copies, The Secret Garden (no. 59 of 250), Poems for Alan Hancox (no. 43 of 350), and Only the Flame Remains, signed and numbered 3 of just 40 copies