VICTORIAN & BRITISH PAINTINGS
Featured on the sale’s catalogue cover is Sir Frank Dicksee’s Yseult, which the artist presented at the Royal Academy in 1901 (estimate $1/2 million). Inspired by Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the painting depicts Princess Yseult of the White Hands, the wife of Sir Tristram, who gazes out of her window looking for a ship on the horizon. Female beauty would always be an important element of Dicksee’s paintings and his gorgeously decorative single-figure subjects like the present work are among his most celebrated pictures.

Completed in 1922, A Dilettante by John William Godward marks an important rediscovery for the artist, reappearing for the first time in nearly a century (estimate $400/600,000). Regarded as one of his last great paintings, A Dilettante demonstrates Godward’s painstaking attention to detail and depicts the artist’s vision of idyllic Antiquity.

Painted in 1894, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s jewel-like Past and Present Generations embodies the artist’s connection to the antique subjects which he cherished (estimate $300/500,000). In addition to painting subtle narratives with emotional depth, Alma-Tadema was known for his diligent sourcing of historical references, such as the marble Roman funerary busts of the balustrade, which are based on precise drawings Alma-Tadema made in the Uffizi in Florence and the Capitoline Museum in Rome.

The auction also offers an extraordinary oil painting by the great English Victorian-era artist John Atkinson Grimshaw. A prime example of the artist’s trademark street scenes throughout the 1880s, A November Morning, exhibits the hallmarks of Grimshaw’s mature style, and his atmospheric depiction of the evening and the first light of the morning (estimate $200/300,000).

Among the selection of outstanding maritime paintings to be offered is Fresh Winds, High Seas by British artist Montague Dawson (estimate $200/300,000). Sailing on the white-capped ocean, with its sails fully unfurled, the sea spray and sunlight tangible, the monumental canvas of the racing clipper is being offered by The Saint Louis Art Museum To Benefit Future Acquis