A series of watercolours relating to the last voyage of the Sunbeam with Lady Brassey.
BRASSEY Lady Anna.; PRITCHETT Robert Taylor (1887.)
£10000.00
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ORIGINAL WATERCOLOURS FROM LADY ANNA BRASSEY'S VOYAGE
Six watercolours measuring 355 by 505mm. Abyssinia, India, Borneo, 1886 -
Lady Anna Brassey (1839-1887) was one of the great Victorian travellers and her accounts on board her luxury yacht the Sunbeam are classics of the genre and were bestsellers in their day. The images here all date from the final voyage on the Sunbeam (1886-87) during which Brassey died of malaria and was buried at sea.
Pritchett was educated at Kings and made a career at Enfield gunmakers until the dissolution of the East India Company in 1858, which was the firm's major client. At that point, having exhibited at the Royal Academy several times from 1851, he devoted his life to painting. He joined the staff of Punch magazine in the 1860s and began to travel widely through Europe and then around the world in 1880-2. He accompanied Sir Thomas and Lady Brassey several times on their ship Sunbeam, during which time he composed these images. He provided the illustrations for In the Trades, the Tropics and the Roaring Forties (1885), and The Last Voyage of the 'Sunbeam (1889).
The images, all in excellent condition, are as follows: 1. "Dragging the Canoe with Lady Brassey at Low Water. Madai N. Borneo." This images appears on page 199 of The Last Voyage... 2. "December 10 Going out for the evening. Port Said." This image appears as a lithograph facing page 1 in The Last Voyage... where it is titled "Port Said. Coaling Party." 3. "Feb. 1st 1887. Maha Jhikarpur." This image doesn't appear in the book, but the subject is covered in pp.11-12 in the text. 4. "December 20 1886. Abyssinian Asab." This image precedes the text by a matter of days. The book commences on Christmas Day 1886 at Port Said. This was executed en route. 5. Untitled but India. Dated 1886, it would have been painted in the opening days of the year, possibly on the 13th at the bazaars at Shirkapur. 6. Untitled, but India. A hunting party on elephants. This rather glamorous image documents the cheetah hunt described on page 39 in The Last Voyage.
cf. Robinson, Wayward Women, p203.
Stock Code: 209491
