Eminent Georgians and Victorians
Autograph and scrap album of Mary Webster (1794-1883)
Estimate: £700 - £1,000
Auction: 18 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
Folio (43 x 31cm), contemporary straight-grain dark red morocco richly decorated in gilt and blind, pictorial watercolour title-page ‘The Scrap Book of Mary Webster’, dated Edinburgh 1831, approx. 70 album leaves with material pasted to rectos and versos, including:
Watercolours, approx. 50, mainly Scottish scenes, also including: ‘Taj Mahal’ (18 x 22.5cm), ‘View of a Kaium or Monastery at Prome in the Kingdom of Ava’ (15.5 x 24.5cm), ‘View of the fire in the High Street Edinburgh, 16th November 1824’ (9 x 13.5cm), ‘Dangerous situation of the Indiana - aground on the James & Mary’s, River Houghly' (17 x 26cm, pen-and-ink with grisaille watercolour), ‘Waterfall, Guzerat, Bombay', (35.5 x 25cm), 'Fort near town of Ferozepore, India' (33 x 21cm);
Autographs, approx. 180 in total, including complete letters, clipped signatures or sentiments, signed covers and free fronts;
i) Complete letters: David Wilkie, Thomas Chalmers (Scottish churchman and political economist, 2 letters, one written in third person), Mary Somerville (scientist and polymath; an invitation to dinner), Anne Grant (Scottish author, on a gift of salmon), Fanny Burney (unsigned autograph note to ‘My dearest Susan’ requesting she intervene to prevent the publication of a poem, annotated at head ‘Madame D’Arblay), Robert Hooper (physician), Sir John Ross (arctic explorer; a letter of recommendation for his nephew Andrew Ross, addressed to Dr Webster), Allan Cunningham (writer and poet), David Brewster (scientist, to Mrs Webster, declining an invitation), Edwin Landseer, and numerous others;
ii) Clipped signatures and sentiments: Robert Walpole, large cutting from manuscript document, probably a treasury warrant, dated 10 October 1727, signed by Walpole ('R. Walpole'), countersigned by George Bubb Dodington, William Clayton, George Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax; Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Halifax, autograph signature ‘Godolphin’ on fragment of printed treasury warrant, 1709; cutting from a treasury warrant with the autograph signatures of George Lyttelton, George Bubb Dodington, Henry Fox and Richard Arundell; clipped signatures of George III (dated 1783, on vellum), George IV, William Wilberforce, Thomas Campbell (Scottish sculptor), Maria Edgeworth, peers including Burlington, Exmouth, Redesdale, etc.;
iii) Signed covers and free fronts: Thomas Babington Macaulay, peers including Minto, Maryborough, Bessborough, Melbourne, Brougham, Egremont etc.;
iv) George II, document signed (military commission on vellum, 1740, loosely inserted).
Miscellaneous material: James Robertson (1813-1888), [View of Sebastopol, Crimea], c.1856, photographic salt print, 22.5 x 29.8cm, signed ‘Robertson’ in the negative, with Mary Webster's manuscript caption to mount ('Sebastapol [sic], from the Admiralty Creek with Forts Paul and Constantine etc., sent me from the Crimea by T. Hunter, Surgeon, March 1856'; printed invitation from Lord Eglinton to the Eglinton Tournament, 1839, addressed to Charles Webster; albumen print portrait photograph presumably of Mary Webster; a letter from a ?J. Stewart, Grenada, 1779, to a William Fraser of Kulbokee (Culbokie), Inverness, on commercial opportunities in the West Indies (letter loose), etc.
Provenance
By descent to the vendor.
Footnote
Mary Webster was the eldest of 11 children born to John Webster, minister at Inverarity, near Dundee, and his wife, also Mary. On John's death in 1807 the family moved to nearby Carmyllie and subsequently to London. Her brother was the eminent physician John Webster MD FRCP FRS (1794-1876), who ‘devoted much time and labour to the examination of lunatic asylums, prisons, and medical institutions at home and abroad’ (Royal College of Physicians, online). A collection of Mary's watercolours is held by Edinburgh Libraries, who remark that ‘the census records indicate that Mary was a lady of independent means, single, living in a household with her mother and grown-up siblings with servants. This would support the evidence that she was able to travel widely and pursue her painting pastime. She was described in her family as a woman who was talented, travelled widely, wrote and painted "en plein air"'. For a collection of Mary's watercolours in this sale see lot 76.