Go on a virtual tour of our July 2026 auction - The Line of Beauty: A Collector’s Pursuit - on display in our historic Broughton Place saleroom in Edinburgh.
This upcoming private collection of over two hundred lots of furniture, works of art, and paintings reflect one person’s pursuit of beauty and perfection. Painstakingly researched and sourced over years, it is a collection that’s primary goal was aesthetic, pieces that inspire the heart and soul with their inherent beauty. The shape of an urn, the turn of an ogee foot, the sinuous curve of the human form, all taken into thoughtful consideration. It was a pursuit borne from the ineffable desire to capture the elusive ‘Line of Beauty’
William Hogarth, in his 1753 treatise ‘The Analysis of Beauty’, decreed that the essence of all beauty is found in the movement of the S-shaped, or serpentine, line. In his words it "leads the eye in a pleasing manner along the continuity of its variety", a contrast to the stillness of the straight line and right angles. Hogarth was trying to decipher something that is essentially undecipherable, the quality that makes an object, or a painting, beautiful.
