£5,000
Five Centuries: Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art | 689
Auction: Five Centuries: Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art
the largest depicting Sol on a chariot, 12cm long; one with discarded gladiator weapons and armoury, 11cm long; the smallest with a rooster and a sheaf of grain to represent Mercury, 7.5cm long. One with handwritten label at the bottom.
Provenance: The Estate of the late J. E. Adam
The labels with these items were handwritten by the collector himself, Charles Richard Fox (1796-1873). He was the son of Henry Richard Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron of Holland, and Lady Elizabeth Webster, herself a fascinating character, well-known as an intellectual.
Fox was an acclaimed numismatist, collecting vast amounts of Greek coins and writing several books about them. His travels, both with the army and privately later in life, led him across Europe and Asia Minor, and gave him a chance to acquire coins and antiquities from an array of places.
The coin collection was bought by the Royal Museum of Berlin after his death, where they are still on view today.
The antiquities have remained in the family until now, they were passed down from Charles Richard Fox to his nephew Charles Frederick Fox Adam, to his son (F E F Adam) who had no children and left his possessions to Janet Adam’s father.