Shropshire Star

Important letters to be sold at Whitchurch auction

A fascinating collection of letters unearthed in a routine house clearance are going to auction.

Published
Auctioneer Aaron dean with the collection of letters to be auctioned off next month.

The letters will be auctioned off at Trevanion and Dean's next sale on September 15 in Whitchurch.

The internationally important collection features some of the biggest and most important names in the late 19th century art world, including members of the Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William Michael Rossetti, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, George Frederick Watts, John Macallan Swan and more.

The series of letters are all written to members of the Ionides family, a famous dynasty of British art patrons and collectors of Greek ancestry.

The majority of the letters are addressed to Constantine Alexander Ionides who is most well-known for his bequest of more than 1,000 pictures, drawings and prints.

Auctioneer Aaron Dean said it was fascinating to see the influence Ionides had over the work.

He said: "When we first started transcribing the letters it was just magic to see the type of dialogue that had been going back and forth constantly between patron and artist.

"In this instance Ionides is kept in touch at every stage of the process, often suggesting subtle changes here and there, it is fascinating to see how much influence the patron had on the finished article."

He said the letters from Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) are particularly interesting.

Rossetti was a founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a controversial group of revolutionary young artists who opposed the dominance of the British Royal Academy, which championed a narrow range of idealised or moral subjects.

Mr Dean added: "The letters we have unearthed not only provide an insight into an exceptionally important art collector of his time, but also the subtle and often unknown relationships between artists and their patrons in the late 19th century.

"The characters involved within the letters, the works discussed and the stories woven within them will not only help to complete archives and fill in historical gaps, they are fascinating to scholars and connoisseurs around the globe, we are very much looking forward to offering them in our next auction."