An example from an album of watercolour studies of Ottoman ceramics that made £14,000 at Dominic Winter.
The 44 large folio studies of dishes, bowls and vases (10 of them double page) were bound together in green cloth c.1920 under the title L. Huth. Collection Damascus & Rhodian.
Louis Huth (1821-1905) was a British company director and merchant banker, who was also an eclectic collector and a patron of various artists.
His circle of friends included George Frederic Watts, who painted Huth’s wife, Helen (1837-1924), and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom he shared a great interest in Chinese ceramics. Huth lent 27 mainly Ottoman ceramic items to the Burlington Fine Arts Club’s 1885 exhibition.
When he died in 1905, his collection was dispersed at auction, where some of his pieces were purchased by his close friend and fellow Burlington member George Salting (1835-1909).
However, the watercolours in this album are thought to be by Sir James Alan Noel Barlow (1881-1968). Four carry his initials JAB and his name appears in a (later) explanatory pencil note to the front free endpaper.
An example from an album of watercolour studies of Ottoman ceramics that made £14,000 at Dominic Winter.
Barlow himself collected ceramics of the Near East, concentrating on Persian and Iznik wares, although later becoming interested in Chinese ceramics.
Following his retirement from life as a civil servant, he was president of the Oriental Ceramic Society from 1943-61. In 1956 he donated the majority of his collection of Islamic pottery to the Ashmolean Museum and smaller groups to the British Museum, the V&A and the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Some of the watercolours in this volume depict items now held in these museums - a clue to why the album, guided at £300-500 at the auction on November 22, took £14,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium).
