WOEBOT

I've mentioned occasionally before that my Grandfather Michael Ingram was a celebrated collector of Drawings and Watercolours, mainly Dutch Old Masters and English Watercolours. Grandad died this Summer after having been uncomfortable for a long time. Why this isn't "off-topic" for WOEBOT is, of course, that we shared collecting as a pass-time. My Grandad was, perhaps like me, always keen to share his interests with other people. Over a period of twenty years I spent many, many afternoons going through his drawings with him. We'd sneak in "just another box" before having tea.

His pictures were broadly regarded as the finest private collection of their kind in Britain, and he was regularily visited by the leading lights of Sotheby's and Christies who presumably were not just on fact-finding missions, but were also keen to secure the collection for their respective auction houses. Whilst there are are many pictures contained within it which are famous (works by Constable, Gainsborough, Turner, Samuel Palmer and Girtin) my Grandfather championed relatively obscure characters like John Scarlett Davis and E.T.Davis and had a particular fondness for the work of amateurs like The Reverend Wlliam Bree and Brabazon.

Although it's scarcely reasonable to draw the comparison, I've often thought his fondness for the cheaply and quickly executable media of watercolour and pencil drawing, the quite specific temporal window during which it was seized upon and mastered in England, and the fact that it was often roving amateurs who took to the task, mirrors my own love of Ardkore. He would often buy pictures decades ahead of the curve for pound or two, pictures which will now sell for unfeasibly high sums of money. If only the Ardkore I spent equally small sums upon were quite as profitable (give it time.....) Grandad's other arch collecting trick was his ability to discover important work in unusual places, he once discovered a Rowlandson in someone's loo and bought the picture off them during lunch.

If anyone in London is interested, and this is the other "point" of my post, they should know that his collection (or at least that larger section of which hasn't been claimed by the family, I took a modest five pictures away which I've always particularly liked) can be viewed at Sotheby's (34-35 New Bond Street) this week between Monday 5th and Wednesday 7th. The auction takes place on 8th December.