The earliest known album of water-colours by the genial Victorian polymath Clarence Bicknell (1842-1918) was sold at auction on Saturday 14th September 2024 for £3600 (that’s $4,750 dollars or €4,275 euros). This is the first-ever recorded sale at auction of a creation by Clarence Bicknell and gives a measure of the importance of the man’s output in the commercial market. Two bidders, one known to be bidding from Italy where Bicknell spent the more productive half of his life, took the price in one exchange beyond the £500-1,000 estimate by the auction house for the album; in a heated and fast exchange a telephone bidder and an online bidder took the hammer price to £3,600. We have asked the auctioneer to invite the buyer to contact us at the Clarence Bicknell Association, in order to keep our record of the Clarence Bicknell items worldwide up-to-date.
The album contains 110 botanical water-colours, mounted ten-to-a-page, the album inside front cover with ink manuscript label ‘Wild flowers of Bordighera & the neighbourhood, drawn in Feb-May 1879, by Clarence Bicknell’, the album 14.5 by 17.3ins. (37 by 44cms.). The watercolours are clearly cut out of one of Clarence’s many pocket sketchbooks and are secured in the album by inserting the corners in cuts in the cardboard page. The album is bound professionally in hardback mock leather with gold leaf impression on the front of the outer cover WILD FLOWERS OF BORDIGHERA AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. To distinguish this album from others we will refer to it as his Album of Sketchbook Pages of Wild Flowers of Bordighera and Neighbourhood, 1879.
The album is dated 1879, the first year he spent in Bordighera and the year in which he gave up being a vicar and devoted himself to botany, archaeology, art and philanthropy. Correspondingly, the technique deployed in these water-colour paintings is naive compared to his lead work. However it remains a record of the flowers he initially saw around him in Bordighera and prefaces his work over the next four years. In 1885 Clarence published a selection of his paintings in the published book Flowering plants and ferns of the Riviera, illustrated with 82 botanically-accurate coloured plates and accompanying notes on 280 species.
I have maintained in the past that Bicknell is less known in the art world because his work remains in museums and universities, even private collections, round Europe and have never been sold in the market. Therefore, no “value“ has ever been attributed to his work. The art dealers, antiquarians and art critics have therefore been interested in Clarence Bicknell less than in those whose work come up for sale. The price of £3,600 for (in our opinion) the least interesting of his works, therefore indicates a much higher value for his later vellum-bound albums of which seven were given by the Bicknell family to the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge in 1985. His later work is much more advanced in technique, botanical detail, and in many cases laced with his whimsical Victorian humour and arts-and-crafts-style borders and detail. The Clarence Bicknell Association knows of six further vellum-bound albums in various private collections none of which have been shown in public. Two which have been seen are the Casa Fontanalba Visitors’ Book and the Book of Guests in Esperanto, in the Bicknell Family Collection which have been published in reproduction form and are available on www.clarencebicknell.com/shop and Amazon. We can only guess at the price that would be paid for the original of one of these albums at market; it is likely to be between two and five times the value of the Album of Sketchbook Pages of Wild Flowers of Bordighera and Neighbourhood, 1879. The new album was then bound professionally in hardback mock leather with gold leaf impression on the front of the outer cover flowers of Bordighera.
Marcus Bicknell 14 September 2024
Semley Auctioneers, UK, Lot 125 Saturday 14th Sept 2024.
“Property of a deceased estate – Clarence Bicknell (1842-1918, Victorian polymath artist, botanist, man of letters, pastor, author, archaeologist and Esperantist) – ‘WILD FLOWERS OF BORDIGHERA AND NEIGHBOURHOOD’ – Footnote – Bicknell settled in Bordighera in 1878, so these watercolours would be some of his earliest recordings of the local flowers and fauna. He was a keen botanist and discovered a number of new plant species, several of which bear his name. The fruits of his passion can be seen in the Bicknell Museum in Bordighera, created in 1888. Two exhibitions were staged at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, in 2018 marking the centenary of his death. The website www.clarencebicknell.com was launched in July 2013 as a commemoration of Clarence’s life and work, and as home to the Clarence Bicknell Association. The website also includes a link to a short documentary film entitled ‘The Marvels of Clarence Bicknell’.”
https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/semley-auctioneers/catalogue-id-srse10138/lot-a34b59f7-d6eb-488a-810b-b1d6012418f8
Public domain. Auction Date: 14 Sep 2024 10:30 BST
Hammer Price: £3,600. Lot Location: Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK