Studio: international art (83.1922)

“ SIR KENELM DIGBY AND FAMILY "
MINIATURE PAINTED BY PETER
OLIVER AFTER VANDYKE

THE BURDETT-COUTTS COLLEC-
TION. a a a a a

CHRISTIE'S famous auction rooms in
King Street, St. James's, are certain
to be thronged in the first week of May,
when there will be on view the pictures
owned by the late Baroness Burdett-
Coutts and removed from the old house
at the corner of Stratton Street that has
long been one of the landmarks of western
London. The pictures are to be sold on
the 4th and 5th of May, and on Monday
of the week following will commence the
dispersal of the drawings and engravings,
the miniatures and porcelain, and the
examples of eighteenth century French
furniture. a a 0 a a
The pictures, whose painters range from
Raphael to men of our own time, include
many works of note and interest. The
Raphael, The Agony in the Garden, for
which there is likely to be much com-
petition, although it is less than a foot
square, is part of the predella of an altar
piece painted in 1505 and now in the
Metropolitan Museum, New York. It
is one of three small pictures in the collec-
tion that belonged to Samuel Rogers ;

pictures that the banker-poet regarded
with peculiar affection, and arranged
together on the wall of his dining roomjin
a position where they were always before
his eyes when he sat at table. The Raphael
and one of its two companions, Lodovico
Carracci's Virgin and Child with Saints,
were bought by Baroness Burdett-Coutts
at Rogers' sale in 1856. She afterwards
acquired the third picture, The Mill, by
Claude, by purchase from Mr. J. G.
Fordham. Among other Old Masters in
the collection are two Hobbemas, several
Murillos, two portraits by Holbein, a
Fete Champetre by Watteau, and a
Tintoretto which is said to be the original
sketch of the large Miracle of St. Mark at
Venice. 0 a a 0 0

Many examples of the English eighteenth
century school of portraiture, historic and
otherwise, are to be found among the
Burdett-Coutts pictures. Of five by
Sir Joshua four are portraits of men,
among them James Coutts, the banker,
and Dr. John Armstrong, the poet. The
fifth, catalogued as A Girl Sketchings
represents Reynolds's niece, Elizabeth
Johnson, whom Fanny Burney describes
as ** soft and pleasing, but unhappily as

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