2 More

THE WINKWORTH COLLECTION Born in 1929, the son of a Canadian mother and English father, Peter Winkworth was educated in Montreal and read History at Wadham College, Oxford before embarking on a career in the City of London with a firm of Canadian stockbrokers. His career was curtailed when he lost a leg in a boating accident off Monte Carlo, and he began collecting Canadiana in earnest during his year of convalescence. While still in his wheelchair, he married Franca Lombardi, the daughter of the Italian First World War fighter ace and pioneer aviator Francis Lombardi, in New York. He quickly mastered his artificial leg and set-out on a six-week tour of Europe with New York print dealer Harry Shaw Newman who introduced him to key contacts and destinations in the print and antiquarian collecting world. Winkworth’s own collecting of Canadiana had been kindled in the 1940s when his uncle John Bernard sold him a set of Cockburn’s Canadian views. His relatives had collected Chinese porcelain on a grand scale (the dispersal of his grandfather Stephen D. Winkworth’s Chinese collection a week-long auction at Sotheby’s in April 1933) so serious collecting was in the blood. True to his forebears Peter Winkworth began to put together what would become arguably the most extensive private collection of Canadiana ever assembled (his obituary in The Times was headed ‘Elegant collector who doggedly amassed an unrivalled archive of Canadian maps, prints and paintings’). In doing so he became a familiar figure to the trade. A magnet for anything of Canadian interest, he was in constant touch with auctioneers, dealers, and runners from Montreal and New York to London and Paris. As he put his collection together, he became an expert in the early iconography of Canada, of his native Montreal in particular, publishing with his friend Charles de Volpi a two volume work on Montreal views in 1963, and later writing on early Canadian printmakers, Krieghoff’s prints and Quebec scenery. Winkworth played an important role in various acquisitions and loans of Canadiana from British to Canadian museums and galleries, notably in the Canadian purchase of Verelst’s Indian Kings portraits in the 1960s (when he was Special Adviser the Public Archives) and vice-versa, and as the honorary curator of Prints and Drawings at the McCord Museum he encouraged the McCord’s Montreal exhibition to the Courtauld Institute in 1992. His work was recognised when he received the Order of Canada (C.M.) in 1983 for his contribution to Canada’s cultural heritage. The collection adorned the walls of the Peter and Franca Winkworth’s elegant London home, the Colefax & Fowler decorated house at 2 Campden Hill Place in Kensington, with rooms dressed with rare complete suites of the great early prints describing the scenery and towns of Upper and Lower Canada. The large Niagara Falls prints were hung in the dining room, Quebec and Montreal in the billiard room, the Maritimes on the landing. Krieghoff’s large canvas, Quebec Farm, in the master bedroom, General Wolfe memorabilia, from sculpted portraits to commemorative pottery, along with great pictures of Quebec and New Brunswick scenery in the drawing room. Here and there works which illustrate J. Russell Harper’s seminal Painting in Canada: a History – a rare early 18th century votive panel from Quebec and William Raphael’s Bonsecours Market, Montreal. Two early 19th century companion paintings of Mi’qmaks, which markedly improve on a famous related canvas by the same hand in the National Gallery of Canada, straddled the fireplace in the drawing room – and thousands of unframed works on paper, prints, photographs, manuscripts and maps filled the large plan chests and drawers lining the old billiard room. Following a visit from Jim Burant of the then National Archives, who described his visit to Campden Hill Place in 1996 as “the most fabulous day of my life”, a conversation began about the destiny of the collection, and in 2002 the National Archives acquired a little over 4,000 items from the collection. After Peter Winkworth’s death in 2005, a further 1,200 items went to the by then re-named Library and Archives, Canada, in association with the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Civilisation. Following the second acquisition in 2008, the Friends of the LAC described the Winkworth Collection as ‘a treasure of paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, maps and other documents of incomparable beauty and breadth, depicting landscapes in every part of Canada and scenes of almost every aspect of life in Canada over four centuries.’ The balance of Canadiana which remained in London – the majority the pictures, watercolours, drawings and prints which dressed the walls of what remained the Winkworth family’s home until the end of 2014 – is included in this sale. These two hundred-plus remaining items make up an exceptional collection in their own right, and they alone range wide enough to present an extensive prospect of early Upper and Lower Canada. The Canadiana is interspersed with a selection of furniture and decorative arts from the house. Some of these autobiographical – abolitionist pieces recall his grandfather Stephen’s marriage to Dorothy “Doll” Wilberforce in 1895, Meissen, Ludwigsburg and Derby figurines of print and map-sellers, zograscopes, and the mezzotints of Miss Macaroni’s print shop all recall Peter’s beginnings as a print collector – Chinese and Japanese works of art recall his grandfather Stephen’s famous collections and his uncle Bill (Keeper in the department of Ceramics at the British Museum in the 1920s and later Japanese works of art consultant at Sotheby’s) – and a wine cooler, tasses-de-vins, salts and Georgian candelabra recall the bon viveur and member of the Paris gourmet club, Plus des Cents. The Winkworth house, situated in a leafy cul-de-sac just off Holland Park Avenue in Kensington, was decorated by Tom Parr of Colefax & Fowler in the late 1970s, and featured in Architectural Digest in May 1978, where Elizabeth Lambert described ‘a mellow house where people, pictures and decorating come together in gentle harmony.’ DECORATIVE ARTS LOTS 1-26

John Raphael Smith (1752-1812)

Miss Macaroni and her Gallant at a Print-Shop; and Spectators at a Print-shop in St. Paul’s Church Yard

Details

John Raphael Smith (1752-1812)
Miss Macaroni and her Gallant at a Print-Shop; and Spectators at a Print-shop in St. Paul’s Church Yard
mezzotints, the first published by J. Bowles, London, 1773, the second published by Carington Bowles, London
S.14 x 9 ¾in. (35.5 x 24.8cm.) and similar
(4)together with an etching of 'The Macaroni Print Shop' by E. Topham and an etching of 'Martin Auctioneer at Edinboro'

Sale room notice

Please note the quantity for this lot is 4 and not 3 as stated in the catalogue.

If you wish to view the condition report of this lot, please sign in to your account.

View condition report

More from The Winkworth Collection: A Treasure House of Canadiana in London

View All