EUROPEAN ART & OLD MASTERS

Edward Lear | Works From the Mary Ann Streeter Collection

30 January 2025

Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, USA Mary Ann Streeter was exposed to art at an early age.

Her grandmother Ruth Thayer purchased works by Sargent (who subsequently became a family friend), LaFarge, Whistler and the like, a number of which hung in Mary Ann's house when she was growing up.

We are delighted to offer ten works from her collection in our forthcoming Five Centuries sale (lots 321 - 330). Below, Mary Ann's children reflect on their mother and her passion for Lear's works of art.

Five Centuries

Explore our forthcoming Five Centuries auction taking place on the 19 & 20 February 2025.

EDWARD LEAR (BRITISH 1812-1888)

VENICE AND SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE

Inscribed, dated and numbered ‘Venice 11 Nov (2)’, pen and ink and watercolour.

£2,500 - £4,000 + fees

After graduating from Radcliffe College (Harvard University) with a degree in Fine Arts, Mary Ann moved to London for a year and it was there that she started buying Lear's watercolours. Although not an artist herself, she appreciated the process of painting and was attracted by his sketches, complete with the commentary he frequently added and the occasional reworking that occurred. She loved to travel and appreciated that his unfinished works gave such a sense of the areas he was drawing.

She purchased her first Lear, El Koorneh, in 1958 and Lear's comment in it, "oh, the flies!" always made her laugh. It hung above her desk. Her acquisitions gradually picked up steam and in 1966 alone she bought four. Some works by Lear she purchased from Agnews Gallery in London and others from galleries in New York; Durlacher Brothers and Davis to name a few. Her brother Nat Dexter bought for her some of the more polished works, but since they usually weren't her favourites, they were generally hung in less prominent locations in the house.

EDWARD LEAR (BRITISH 1812-1888)

SUNSET ON THE NILE

Signed with monogram and inscribed ‘Nile’, watercolour.

£6,000 - £9,000 + fees

As you see in the works featured within our February 2025 Five Centuries auction, almost all are sketches or preliminary drawings and there are few refined or finished works. There are also no Lear oils as she found them ponderous to the point of being "lugubrious".

Her last addition was in approximately 1987 and she complained that Lear's works had become too expensive. A competing reason was that her husband Henry has long collected marine art and between the two of them, their house in Wenham, just north of Boston, was simply running out of wall space.

When talking about her works by Lear, Mary Ann would inevitably start quoting his limericks and end with a hearty chuckle.

There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, 'It is just as I feared! Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!'

- Limericks By Edward Lear

Mary Ann bought Lear's watercolours simply because she enjoyed and appreciated them, and collected no other artists' works. She would have been shocked to know that she ultimately had 35 - not including five or six lithographs of his birds. Since these were hung or tucked in bookcases around their old, rambling house, which was also packed with ship paintings, it was not obvious to anyone, including likely her, that she had so many. When she was much older and no longer able to go upstairs, we moved many to the ground floor so she could see them.

Forthcoming Lots From the Collection