A POLYCHROME-DECORATED CAST-METAL COAT-OF-ARMS, SECOND HALF 20TH CENTURY

A POLYCHROME-DECORATED CAST-METAL COAT-OF-ARMS
SECOND HALF 20TH CENTURY
Modelled as the armorial bearings of the Earls Bathurst
38 x 28 ½ in. (96.5 x 72.5 cm.) overall

GLORIA
(1927-2018)

Gloria come into my and my parents’ life in 1965 when she married David Rutherston. He had lived with his wife Mary, who very sadly died in 1964, and their four children in the Grange, a handsome Georgian brick house set in parkland in the village of Crawley Down, near East Grinstead in West Sussex, which was just across the fields from my childhood home. In our country world Gloria seemed like a figure from another planet, epitomising style and glamour. And she had plenty of both. Even her early years were exotic with a hint of mystery with her family from Toxteth near Liverpool and her early upbringing in America. This was followed by brilliant success as a model, especially working for the couturier Jacques Fath and Dior in the late 1940s, becoming known as Britain’s most perfect outdoor girl and being chosen to showcase British woollen fashion in Italy.

David Rutherston’s family were interwoven with the story of the British art establishment of the early 20th Century. His grandfather Moritz Rothenstein had settled in Bradford from Germany in the 1860s, establishing himself in the wool cloth trade. Of his six children two were distinguished artists and two were serious collectors. The eldest son, Charles (1866- 1927), who patriotically anglicised his name to Rutherston at the time of the Great War, had a successful career following his father in the textile business and was a discriminating and enlightened collector, focussing particularly on early Chinese bronzes and contemporary painters, including Augustus and Gwen John, Paul Nash, Wyndham Lewis and a young Henry Moore. In 1925, he decided to leave his collection to Manchester City Art Gallery with the visionary stipulation that the works should be circulated in teaching institutions in Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire to encourage students to benefit from looking at fine works of art.

The youngest sons were both celebrated artists, Sir William Rothenstein (1872-1945) and Albert Rutherston (1881-1953) – see lots 135-148 & 155-161. During his long career, William exhibited at the New English Art Club and cofounded the Carfax Gallery, working closely with artists such as Charles Conder, Philip Wilson Steer and Augustus John. Sickert was a particular friend as was Auguste Rodin, whose reputation in England he did much to enhance. His son John (1901-1992) became the pioneering Director of the Tate (1938-1964) ‘dragging the British art world screaming and kicking into the twentieth century’ as his obituary described. David’s father, Albert, studied at the Slade and shared many of the same friends as his elder brother William, especially Augustus John and William Orpen, then later Sickert, and he also exhibited at the New English Art Club (see lots 130-134 & 149-154). From 1912, he designed for the theatre and ballet, then concentrated on watercolours on silk, book illustrations, gouache and life drawing.

Their eldest sister Emily Hesslein was also a serious collector of modern paintings, sculpture and works of art, needlework and furniture which were sold in a series of sales at Sotheby’s London in 1962 (see lots 12 & 14) and there is a drawing of her by the great friend of her three brothers, Augustus John ( lot 154). In the spirit of David Rutherston’s family’s strong tradition of patronage and collecting, the Grange was home to an interesting and eclectic mix of works of art with an emphasis on the modern and contemporary. As a solicitor, David acted for a number of galleries including the Marlborough Gallery from whom the superb Ben Nicholson was acquired, which will be offered at Christie’s, London, in The One Sale on 10 July. The spacious house in Tregunter Road that David and Gloria remodelled with the help of the fashionable designer Billy McCarty in a contemporary vein was a showcase for their growing collection (see lot 221). Then in 1973 they moved to Jaynes Court, an early 18th Century house next to the church in Bisley, Gloucestershire, where David’s parents had also lived at Nash End Cottage from 1925.

After David’s death in 1975, Gloria married Henry, 8th Earl Bathurst in 1978 and moved into the family’s splendid seat, Cirencester Park, rebuilt in 1714-18 by Allen, 1st Earl Bathurst. James Lees-Milne has described so evocatively in his book Earls of Creation Lord Bathurst’s vision for the park undertaken ‘in collaboration with Pope and other friends, who furnished him with the most convincing arguments drawn from classical precedents‘. Pevsner calls it ‘the finest surviving example in England of planting in the pre-landscape manner‘. The Broad Avenue runs through the park from West to East for nearly five miles and seven rides meet at the first rond-point, this magnificent vista was captured when approaching maturity in the mid-18th Century by the artist George Lambert – see lot 94.

His mother, Frances Apsley (1653-1727), the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, who married Sir Benjamin Bathurst (1639-1704), had been Maid of Honour and an intimate friend to both Queen Mary and Queen Anne, through her came the historic jewellery associated with Queen Anne and the beautiful embroidered bedspread (lot 18), a remarkable survival of the finest early 18th Century ‘bizarre’ needlework (a pearl necklace said to be the gift of Queen Anne is to be offered at Christie’s in the Important Jewels sale on 30 July, illustrated at the back of this catalogue). The 1st Earl married his first cousin Catherine Apsley, daughter of his uncle Sir Peter Apsley, and the splendid portrait by Maubert, considered one of the artist’s finest works, shows their four eldest children - lot 38 in this sale.

Their eldest son Henry (1714- 1794) was celebrated as a lawyer and politician, becoming Lord High Chancellor from 1771 to 1778 and being created 1st Lord Apsley in 1771, the year Robert Adam began designing Apsley House for him. It was completed in 1778, three years after he had eventually succeeded his long-lived father, who had seen the reigns of seven monarchs. In 1807 Apsley House was sold by Lord Bathurst’s son and heir, the 3rd Earl (1762-1834) to the Marquess Wellesley and ten years later the lease was acquired from Wellesley by his brother the 1st Duke of Wellington, who commissioned Benjamin Dean Wyatt to remodel the interiors.

Adam’s inspired designs for the principal rooms, preserved in the Soane Museum, display the whole range of his most accomplished neo-classical vocabulary including a sophisticated semi-elliptical commode, very similar to the commode ‘inlaid with Etruscan ornament‘ he designed for the Earl of Derby’s house in Grosvenor Square, realised by the Broad Street cabinetmakers Ince & Mayhew in 1775. Little has survived from Adam’s interiors for Apsley House but an overmantel (lot 25) corresponds to his design preserved in The Sir John Soane Museum, inscribed ‘Glass frame for the Library for The Earl of Bathurst/Adelphi, 12th June 1778’ (SM Adam Volume 20/175). There is a payment to Ince & Mayhew recorded in Lord Bathurst’s bank account at Drummonds in 1779 and there is a distinct group of furniture from Cirencester Park that share some of the features that have been identified as characteristic of the firm’s documented oeuvre and may have formed part of the fashionable furnishings commissioned for Apsley House in the 1770s (see lots 26-29).

As part of his long political career, the 3rd Earl Bathurst K.G., P.C, played a central political role during the Napoleonic wars, serving as President of the Board of Trade 1807-1812, briefly acting as Foreign Secretary in 1809 before becoming Secretary of State for War and the Colonies 1812-1827. The splendid Vienna Porcelain plaques by the celebrated artist Josef Nigg (1782-1863) and the magnificent Berlin dinner service were diplomatic gifts from Francis I, Emperor of Austria (1768-1835) and Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia (1770-1840) respectively presented to the 3rd Earl following the defeat of Napoleon (lots 98-100). The 3rd Earl was succeeded in turn by his two elder sons and eventually by his great-grandson who became the 7th Earl in 1892. The following year the 7th Earl married the Hon Lilias Borthwick (1871-1965), only daughter of the 1st and last Lord Glenesk (1830-1908) and it is via this route that the bronze inkwell by the renowned actress and sculptor Sarah Bernhardt entered the collection (to be offered in The Classic Art Evening Sale, Christie’s London, on 29 July). On the death of her younger brother, Oliver, in 1905 Lilias became the sole heiress to her father’s great fortune as well as his newspaper, The Morning Post. Continuing the strong female lead set by her husband’s forbears two centuries earlier, from her father’s death in 1908, she took on the running of The Morning Post until 1937 when it was sold to the Daily Telegraph. A copy of the ‘Boleyn Cup’, was presented by the staff of the paper to Lord and Lady Bathurst to commemorate their silver wedding in 1918 (lot 126), the original, preserved in the Parish Church St John the Baptist, Cirencester, is reputed to have been made for Anne Boleyn in 1535 before passing to her daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.

A close friend of Queen Mary, Lilias sat for de László and the collection also includes as significant portion of her considerable jewellery collection, some of which is in this sale (lots 83, 84 & 88), with further highlights to be sold by in the Important Jewels sale on 30 July, including the Cartier tiara she commissioned following her inheritance in 1908 (illustrated at the back of this catalogue). Her daughter-in-law Viola, Lady Apsley C.B.E., continued her mother-in-law’s tradition of strong and active participation in public life, despite her being confined to a wheelchair after a hunting fall in 1930. She succeeded her late husband as...