Why is the collection special?

Spanning items amassed over four generations, this wonderful family collection will include important artworks by David Jones (lot 10), Rudolf Helmut Sauter (lot 13) and French Post-Impressionist Othon Friesz (lot 6). Many of these works have interesting provenance individually, but grouped together as part of Roseberys' June Modern British & 20^th Century Art sale, the shared family histories marks the collection as a important record of British social and visual history.

Lot 10: David Jones, British 1895-1974 - The Little Wood, c.1940Price Realised: £17,056

Who were the different members of the family? Sidney and Stella Churchill were a remarkable couple. Sidney J. A. Churchill was a diplomat and collector and connoisseur of Renaissance and Oriental Manuscripts and Persian antiquities, working with the British Museum and V&A Museum in the late 19^th century to build their collections. He had many books published, most notably on the Goldsmiths of Italy. Items from his collection will feature in our Jewellery & Watches sale on Tuesday 25^th June 2024.

Dr. Stella Churchill qualified as a doctor in 1917, training at Cambridge and the London School of Medicine for Women and first working as an anaesthetist in London. She had an illustrious career, writing many books on maternity and child welfare, and later specialised in medical psychology and was appointed psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic.

Ruth Plant was an architect and become known for her study of the rock churches of Ethiopia - a subject largely unknown by Western scholarship at the time. She would make a number of trips to Ethiopia between 1967 and 1974, eventually publishing the book 'Architecture of the Tigre, Ethiopia' in 1985 on the subject. We are very fortunate to be selling one of her own watercolours of a scene in Tigre as part of the collection. We will also have a work by her daughter, the painter Juliet Petty (1948-2023).

Where did they purchase the works?

Many of the works were purchased from important galleries, such as the David Jones which was bought by Stella Churchill from the illustrious Redfern Gallery. This was on the occasion of Jones’s 1940 exhibition at the gallery. The Othon Friesz was likewise purchased from Frost & Reed, an important gallery in London that sold works by French Impressionist and Modern artists.

Many other works were gifted to family members by their various artist friends, such as the piece made jointly by husband and wife Clifford Ellis and Rosemary Ellis (lot 14) that features a dedication 'to Ruth and Donald from Rosemary and Clifford R C'. The work was most likely given to Ruth Plant and her first husband Donald Craik during WWII. The pair had set up the London Institute of Design in 1939, which moved to Bath in the War and where Clifford Ellis was Head of the School of Art at Bath Technical College.