Commissioned in 1886 by Henry Boddington for the ceiling in the Drawing Room at Pownall Hal🍷l, Wilmslow, Cheshire

Sold, Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co, London, 21 June 1♌983, lot 39

T. Raffles Davison, A Modern Country Home [A Review of Pownall Hall], The Art Journal (1891), pp. 329, 333-334, illustrated.

Nikolaus Pevsner and Edward Hubbard, The Buildings of England, Cheshire, London 1971, pp. 385-386.

Pownall Hall in Wilmslow, Cheshire was completed around 1835. In 1886, the brewer Henry Boddington, with the help of William Ball, aimed to refurbish it, calling on a progressive team, foremost among which was the Century Guild, founded four years previo💫usly by Herbert Horne, Arthur Heygate, Mackmurdo and Selwyn Image. Horne became co-editor with Mackmurdo of The Hobby Horse, the Century Guild magazine, in 1884, and its sold editor in 1893. The magazine had a considerable influence upon William Morris and probably directly inspired his Kelmscott Press adventure in 1891. Horne later became an inspi🀅red collector of Italian Renaissance works. He retired to Florence in 1900 to write extensively on Botticelli. In 1915, he bought the Palazzo Fossi and bequeathed it, together with his collection of pictures, furniture, and ceramics to the city of Florence; it was renamed Museo Horne.