Bridge sketch sold

AN early 19th century image of Henley Bridge has been sold at auction after it was kept under a bed for about 50 years.

The watercolour was painted in 1814 by artist Joseph Farringdon and was found among a collection which once belonged to British writer, art critic and Liberal Party politician Iolo Aneurin Williams.

The painting was one of 350 works from from Mr Williams’s collection that were up for auction on Wednesday last week by Olympia Auctions in Kensington and fetched £650, just shy of the top valuation of £700.

The painting is inscribed and dated “Henley Bridge Augst 4th 1814”, on the lower left and on the reverse is a sketch of a large house in a parkland in pen and ink and grey wash, on two sheets of joined laid paper possibly from a sketchbook.

Farrington, was a leading landscape draftsman who trained under Welsh landscape painter, Richard Wilson while Mr Williams was a museum and art critic for The Times from 1936 onwards and an avid collector.

After his death in 1962 his collection was divided between his three children, and then by descent to his grandson, Richard Keene, and since then had been kept safely in storage boxes under a bed until now.