Summers Place Auctions has included an impressive and extremely rare set of four carved marble figures representing the seasons in the first sale this year. Made in France in the late 17th/early 18th century and on later sandstone pedestals, the life-size figures are expected to sell for £120,000 - £180,000. It comes from La Granja Vella de Marti Codolar in Barcelona, Spain.

In 1798 the original Granja Vella house was sold to the Milà de la Roca family, from Barcelona, who transformed the old country house into a stately neoclassical house at the beginning of the 19th century. They then added some magnificent gardens and opened the first zoo in Barcelona. The residence is now a home for retired Salesian monks.

The representation of the four seasons in figural form has maintained a remarkable degree of continuity from late antiquity onwards. In Pompeian and Roman frescoes and mosaics, Spring is a young woman holding flowers, Summer has a sickle and ears or sheaves of corn, Autumn grapes and vine leaves and winter, thickly clad against the cold. With some minor variations, the same iconography has been used in this set of seasons. The inspiration for this set almost certainly comes from those created for the gardens of Versailles. The figures of Spring and Winter bear similarities to those produced by the sculptor Jean Thierry (1669-1739), who was court sculptor to both Louis XIV at Versailles and Philip V of Spain for the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso in Spain. Engravings of both sculptures titled Flore and l’Hiver were produced by Simon Thomassin, (1655-1733) who was commissioned by Louis XIV to make engravings of all of the sculptures at Versailles published in 1694.

It is with these celebrated works that this remarkable and hitherto unrecorded rare set of four marble seasons can be associated. Carved with a fluidity of movement and panache in marked contrast to the plethora of stilted and formulaic examples carved in the 19th century, their inclusion in this sale represents a rare opportunity to acquire one of the very few sets of life size marble seasons to have come on the market for a considerable time, which marks them out as a rare survival from the period.

Other important works in the auction include a carved Istrian marble wellhead which was made in Venice in the 15th Century and bears a lot of similarities to the wellhead which still stands in the courtyard of the Ca’ d’Oro palazzo in Venice. It was originally situated, by family repute, at Horton Hall, Northamptonshire, the seat of the Earls of Halifax. Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, who later established the Bank of England in 1721, set about developing the house and estate, surrounding the house with formal gardens in keeping with their growing influence both locally and in Parliament. In the 18th Century large quantities of sculpture and artefacts were brought back from Italy by noblemen on the Grand Tour and it is likely that this wellhead was brought back to England at this time and formed part of the remodelled gardens. Horton Hall was demolished in 1936. Similar wellheads are in the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Correr Museum. It is estimated to sell for £25,000 - £40,000.

A pair of lead figures of Scaramouche and Pantalone, firmly attributed to John Cheere are from circa 1755 with excellent provenance from 19th Century Netherlands, via Italy and Germany until they returned to the UK this century. The two figures from the Commedia dell'Arte, each almost 1 metre high, are expected to fetch £15,000 - £25,000. Statues by John Cheere, who was the leading lead caster in 18th-century England, can be found in the gardens of many of England’s greatest 

country houses, including Castle Howard, Hampton Court Palace, Syon House, Chiswick House and Keddleston Hall to name but a few. His statues were a feature of any fashionable 18th-century garden until the arrival of Capability Brown and his Arcadian landscapes.

A carved white marble torso of a woman signed Richard Garbe ARA (1876 - 1957) and dated 1931 is 88cm high and estimated at £3,000 - £5,000. Garbe was awarded prizes for his wood carvings by the Turners Company at their annual exhibition at the Mansion House in 1892 and 1893 and he taught at the Central School of Arts & Crafts and was Head of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. Claire Norrington's Leaping Deer bronze, signed and numbered 4/9 is expected to sell for £15,000 - £25,000. Claire graduated from Winchester School of Art in 1991 and has worked as a professional sculptor since that time. As well as completing a number of Public Sculptures, Claire has also undertaken numerous private commissions including works for Marks & Spencer, The General Trading Co and Wessex Children's Hospital, Hampshire. In 1998 she was the youngest artist to be elected a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

The auction also includes some natural history lots and highlights among them are a 1.3 metre long Eurhinosaurus skull from the Lower Jurassic and found in France. The Eurhinosaurs was a type of Ichthyosaur with a very long and slender upper jaw similar in many respects to today's Swordfish. Such well preserved examples are extremely rare as the slender upper jaw is usually missing, as a result this fine example should make £25,000 - £40,000. While an ammonite from Canada carries an estimate of £25,000 - £30,000. The 49.5cm ammonite was found in Alberta and it is rare to find such a large example as most are crushed up. They are fantastically coloured in shades of iridescent reds and greens and have to be seen to be believed.