Dec 15, 2022 - Sale 2625

Sale 2625 - Lot 170

Price Realized: $ 7,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 9,000

ARTHUR RACKHAM (1867-1939)

"Cock-a-doodle-doo! My dame has lost her shoe" for Mother Goose.

Two ink and watercolor drawings on one sheet of paper (together with two crowing rooster vignettes in the middle border, unused), mounted to board, published in Mother Goose the Old Nursery Rhymes (London: William Heinemann, 1913; illustrated as black and white line designs on pages 128 and 129). Full sight size measures 260x173 mm; 9 3/4x6 3/4 inches (each drawing, above and below roosters measure approximately 4x 1/2x6 1/2 inches); full board is 11 1/2x9 1/4 inches. Each signed at bottom left: initialed "AR" in top image, "ARackham" in bottom; inscribed in pencil at bottom right margin "To Ernest Brown with kindest regards from Arthur Rackham Nov. 1913." Attached to early matte along top edge and in original 21x17-inch frame (Charles H. West, London) with labels by Leicester Galleries mounted to the board and descriptive label by Sessler's attached to backing paper.

Provenance: Ernest Brown (with presentation inscription)/Ernest Brown & Phillips, Ltd; Leicester Galleries, with their label; Mrs.. George Leon; Sessler's gallery, Philadelphia; private collection; Sotheby's New York 12 December 1995; Nina and Frank N. Manitzas, acquired from the above; Christie's New York 4 December 2018; private collection, New York, acquired from the above.

Exhibited: "Artist of Fame and Promise," Leicester Galleries, August 1945 (with their label indicating purchase to Mrs. George Leon)

In July 1902, Cecil and Wilfred Phillips opened a gallery in Leicester Square, London. The following year, Ernest Brown joined the organization, and they became Ernest Brown and Phillips Ltd., operating the Leicester Galleries, which became Rackham's dealer for several years. To make his black and white published book illustrations attractive to art collectors, he would often add touches of color, as here, where watercolor touches were applied to the cockscombs, woman's dress, and the fiddle have watercolor touches.