One couple’s Victorian ‘clutter’ is expected to make over ￡1m at auction

A collection of over 300 museum-worthy 19th-century paintings and decorative works of art that was started in the 1950s when prices were at rock bottom is expected to fetch more than ￡1 million at Christie's this month. The sum pales in comparison with works by contemporary artists, posing the question whether this neglected area is due for reassessment.

The collection is one of the last of its kind. It was formed by Albert Gallichan, an advertising executive who died in 2001, and his partner, Peter Rose, an art teacher who died last year aged 93. Known in the trade as "Victoria and Albert", the pair had been inspired by curators at the V&A, and their spacious Brighton villa did indeed resemble a museum.

Echoing the Victorian salons that hung pictures from floor to ceiling, Rose and Gallichan filled every room and corridor of their house with art, like an homage to ordered clutter. Gothic, Greek and Egyptian revival cabinets lined the walls, each stuffed with stylish Arts and Crafts glass and ceramics.

The rooms were painted in distinctive eye-catching colours - a green study housing sculptures by Gilbert Bayes on a Christopher Dresser-style cabinet that was crammed with voluptuous translucent glass by James Powell; a terracotta dining room presenting Empire-style furniture overlooked by the landscapes of artists who made the Grand Tour, such as Edward Lear and John William Inchbold; and a bathroom drenched in ceramic tiles and exotic charger plates by William De Morgan.

Christie's will attempt to recreate the colour of the villa in its pre-sale viewing rooms. Photographs of the interior convey an extremely lively sense of decoration. A nature room, for instance, bustles with taxidermy, shell pictures, stained glass and grotesque anthropomorphic Martinware pots. The art historian John Christian described the room as "a receptacle for everything weird and wacky".

While the pictures in the collection by major artists such as Burne-Jones or Poynter are quite slight, there are good examples by minor artists like John William North, or the rarely seen Peter Paul Marshall, who was a business partner of designer William Morris. In 1992, two of Marshall's genre interiors were probably among Gallichan and Rose's more expensive acquisitions, having just sold at Christie's for ￡7,150 to The Fine Art Society, from whom they bought them. They are now moderately estimated in excess of ￡15,000.

On the whole, works are estimated to sell, i.e. not high. A watercolour study by the fairy painter John Anster Fitzgerald for his painting Who Killed Cock Robin?, should comfortably exceed its ￡5,000 estimate. A ravishing drawing by Simeon Solomon, a gift to the collectors from Faber and Faber director Charles Monteith, illustrates their fondness for the Pre-Raphaelites and should also exceed its ￡25,000 estimate.

Rose and Gallichan were not wealthy, but they were impassioned by Victorian aesthetics, and inspired by the example of Arthur Grogan, a collector who maintained that, in the 1950s and 1960s, he never paid more than ￡5 for a picture.

Period-design gold frames add a lustrous sense of value to what was essentially a low-budget exercise. But although the pair never bought with investment in mind, occasionally they struck it rich. In 1988, for example, they bought an anonymous watercolour after William Holman Hunt's The Light of the World painting for a few hundred pounds, and hung it in their peacock-blue drawing room, where it seemed as if the lamp in the painting was illuminating the surrounding accumulation of Gothic Revival furniture, Minton porcelain, and sculptures by Lord Leighton and Sir William Reid Dick. Eighteen years later, the watercolour was revealed to have been the work of Edward Robert Hughes, nephew of the Pre-Raphaelite Arthur Hughes, and is the top lot with an estimate of ￡60,000 to ￡100,000.

Many of the works of art designed by Morris (rare hand-painted tiles), De Morgan (tiles and chargers), Powell (glass) and W.A.S. Benson (metalwork) are of museum quality, says Peyton Skipwith, a former director of The Fine Art Society which specialises in the Arts and Crafts movement. In fact, several examples from the collection have already been accepted by the British Museum and the Ashmolean.

The rest Rose wanted to sell in order to keep everything in circulation. The proceeds will go to their charitable Albert Dawson Educational Trust which promotes education on Victorian art.

Nelson’s sword and Cromwell’s pocket watch

Historical memorabilia are among the highlights of the Chelsea Antiques Fair this month, including a sword that was once owned by Admiral Horatio Nelson and a pocket watch owned by Oliver Cromwell. According to the records, the 2ft sword was given by Nelson to his nephew Maurice William Suckling, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and remained in that family until sold by Sotheby's in 2003. It is now being shown by Wick's Antiques at the fair with a ￡48,500 price tag.

Measuring just 1.5 inches long, Cromwell's Puritan ''fob watch'' is an extremely rare identifiable possession of the Lord Protector. It was sold at an auction in Carlisle two years ago for ￡18,000 to the specialist dealer Martyn Downer, who makes no bones about how cheap that was.

"The sale was clearly missed by collectors," he says. "Regardless of its extraordinary provenance, the price was low even by the standards of a rare silver cased Puritan watch. To find such a rare artefact illustrated and catalogued in a scholarly publication from 1808 is quite exceptional." Downer is now asking ￡180,000 for it.

The fair is taking place in Chelsea's Old Town Hall from September 21, signalling a return to normal among some rather more hesitant responses to the latest pandemic developments. London's Tribal Art Fair was cancelled this month, while the Pavilion of Art & Design will be held online only during Frieze week next month.

Most others are going ahead with prescribed visitor restrictions, starting with the new Eye of the Collector tomorrow. Its location, Two Temple Place, is a Grade II-listed neo-Gothic Victorian building close to the Temple Inns of Court (its own collection is also worth exploring).

Here, 30 dealers will be displaying more than 100 works covering 6,000 years of art history, from a 6th century BC bronze Greek helmet to 1960s abstractions by Perle Fine, a forgotten contemporary of Mark Rothko, and a recent tree-like sculpture by the successful contemporary north African artist Ibrahim El-Salahi.

At Photo London, meanwhile, which returns to Somerset House on Friday, an interesting addition to the exhibitor list is picture dealers Messums, entering the photography market for the first time with a display of 50 vintage prints by the revered American war photographer Robert Capa, from a single collection that is being sold en bloc, thus ruling out the casual shopper.

David Bailey is also taking his own stand to show rarely seen work from his own archive.

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