India Ross
Associate Specialist
Lot 106AR
Anne Estelle Rice(American/British, 1887-1959)White Cyclamen
Ending from 26 November 2025, 12:00 GMT
Online, London, Knightsbridge£800 - £1,200
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Catherine King
Senior Specialist
Anne Estelle Rice (American/British, 1887-1959)
White Cyclamen
oil and watercolour on paper
26 x 37cm (10 1/4 x 14 9/16in).
with a further unfinished oil, still life study, on the reverse, by the same hand
oil and watercolour on paper
26 x 37cm (10 1/4 x 14 9/16in).
with a further unfinished oil, still life study, on the reverse, by the same hand
Footnotes
Provenance
The Artist, where acquired by
Elsie Allison (née Baxter), by whom gifted to the family of the present owner, and thence by descent
Private Collection, U.K.
J. D. Fergusson first introduced Anne Estelle Rice to Elsie and Ruby Baxter, who both modelled for the Scottish artist, which lead to the three women remaining lifelong friends.
Rice had a particular affinity with flowers and plants and although much of her earlier work, which is often unsigned, has not been identified, she began exhibiting works such as Les Roses in Paris by 1908 and continued to produce flower-pieces her entire life. Her large-scale Fauvist bouquets, among them Le Bouquet of 1910-11, now in the Hepworth Wakefield, rank among her most impressive achievements. Indeed, in his review of Rice's one-man show at the Baillie Gallery in London in 1913, the critic Michael Sadler declared that, 'In the painting of flowers Miss Rice shows real genius.' As we see in the present lot, Rice also produced smaller-scale flower studies. These ranged from the sketches that she hoped to publish as a wildflower book to oil studies such as Roses, which mirrors the same close-up, bird's-eye view of blooms that spill out unconfined by the pictorial surface, and its dark, neutral ground, that we see in White Cyclamen. It is conceivable that both were among the paintings Rice took to America in 1914 to 'take New York by storm'.
We are grateful to Susan Moore for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.
Susan Moore is in the process of writing the forthcoming monograph on Anne Estelle Rice and would like to hear from owners of any works by the artist. Please write to Susan Moore, c/o Modern British and Irish Art, Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, London W1S 1SR or email britart@bonhams.com.