Sotheby's July Sale of British Art

Some highlights from Sotheby's London sale of "Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art", held on July 12. Above is the star, Siren by John William Waterhouse, 1901, which sold for 3.8 million pounds.

Details. Incidentally this work is not Victorian, Waterhouse was not a Pre-Raphaelite, and I would not call it Impressionist, either, but nobody knows what to call this sort of painting in this period, so Sotheby's didn't even try.

Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys, The Red Cap, 1900.

Simeon Solomon, Habet! in the Colosseum, A.D. XC. Solomon came from a wealthy London Jewish family but fell into scandal after he was arrested in 1873 for "attempting to commit an act of indecency," that is, approaching a male prostitute who turned out to be a police informer.

Drawing by John Everett Millais, Yeomen of the Guard, 1883. I never saw myself as a great artist or anything but I am intensely jealous of people who can sketch a scene like that. That I would love to be able to do.

Edward Burne-Jones, Study for the Valiant Knight, a tapestry, c 1889. Detail.

And to conclude with something completely different a twentieth-century work by Edward Seago, Marsh Landscape. The date is unknown because the artist held onto this one and it was sold by his estate after his death in 1973.