Lot 124
'The Souls'
Album of silhouette portraits, 1899-1901
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 21 September 2023 at 10:00 BST
Description
containing some 90 scissor-work silhouette portraits in black paper, set into rectos and versos of stiff card mounts, nearly all with autograph signature of sitter (mounted or direct), many dated, a few also with a silhouette of presumably of the sitter's hand, sitters include: A. J. Balfour (1848-1930), prime minister; Percy Wyndham (1835-1911), Conservative politician and spiritualist; Madeline Wyndham (née Campbell, d.1920), wife of Percy; George Wyndham (1863-1913), Conservative politician and son of Percy and Madeline; Pamela Tennant (née Wyndham, later Baroness Glenconner, then Viscountess Grey of Fallodon, 1871-1928), writer and socialite, and daughter of Percy and Madeline Wyndham (three portraits); Edward Tennant (later Baron Glenconner, 1859-1920), Liberal politician and husband of Pamela; Mary, Lady Elcho (née Wyndham, later Charteris, Countess of Wemyss, 1862-1937), socialite and daughter of Percy and Madeline Wyndham; Hugo Charteris, Lord Elcho (later the Earl of Wemyss, 1857-1937), Conservative politician and husband of Mary; Cynthia (1887-1960) and Guy Charteris (1886-1967), children of Mary and Hugo; Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), physicist and spiritualist; Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (1876-1948), suffragette and daughter of Duleep Singh; Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914), American physician; Augustus Hemming (1841-1907), colonial administrator, and others, including Elizabeth, Countess of Northesk ('Bessie Northesk'), Douglas and Madge Carnegie (also members of the Northesk family), the Duke and Duchess of Atholl, Dorothy Carleton (niece of Percy Wyndham), and others. Together with a similar album (containing approx. 56 silhouette portraits)
Footnote
Note: The Souls were an aristocratic clique active from the 1880s to the 1910s who 'protested against the philistinism of contemporary aristocratic society, cultivating personal intimacy and friendship rather than field sports and ostentatious display' (ODNB). The nucleus of the group comprised four families, the Balfours, Lytteltons, Tennants, and Wyndhams, with sometime prime minister Arthur Balfour as their leader, their preferred recreations being late-night word games and golfing holidays at North Berwick. This album provides a glimpse of their wider milieu, including scientists, spiritualists and various Scottish peers, and is exactly contemporary with John Singer Sargent's monumental portrait of the Wyndham sisters, Pamela Tennant, Mary Elcho, and Madeline Adeane, known as The Three Graces, which was exhibited in 1900.