Lot 307
Anatomy.- Constable (J.) Five skulls on a table, watercolour, 1843.
Hammer Price: £2,200
Description
Anatomy.- [Bell (Sir Charles, artist and anatomist, 1774-1842)].- Constable (J.) Five skulls on a table, a skeleton in the background, brown ink and watercolour on paper, 250 x 340mm. (9 ¾ x 13 1/2in.), signed and dated 1843 bottom right, inscribed "To Dr. Shaw, with Jn. Constable's complts" bottom left, 1843.
⁂ A variant of the image published as Plate 1 - an etching of the author's own drawing - in Sir Charles Bell's Essays on the Anatomy of the Expression in Painting, 1806. After a distinguished medical career in London Bell returned to Edinburgh in 1836 and died six years later while working on a new edition with his former Middlesex Hospital colleague and brother-in-law, the surgeon Alexander Shaw (1804-1890) who edited the third, enlarged, edition in 1844. This version adds a fifth skull at left and the skeleton at right, and is clearly the work of an accomplished anatomical artist.
Description
Anatomy.- [Bell (Sir Charles, artist and anatomist, 1774-1842)].- Constable (J.) Five skulls on a table, a skeleton in the background, brown ink and watercolour on paper, 250 x 340mm. (9 ¾ x 13 1/2in.), signed and dated 1843 bottom right, inscribed "To Dr. Shaw, with Jn. Constable's complts" bottom left, 1843.
⁂ A variant of the image published as Plate 1 - an etching of the author's own drawing - in Sir Charles Bell's Essays on the Anatomy of the Expression in Painting, 1806. After a distinguished medical career in London Bell returned to Edinburgh in 1836 and died six years later while working on a new edition with his former Middlesex Hospital colleague and brother-in-law, the surgeon Alexander Shaw (1804-1890) who edited the third, enlarged, edition in 1844. This version adds a fifth skull at left and the skeleton at right, and is clearly the work of an accomplished anatomical artist.
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