Helen Allingham

This delicate watercolour by Victorian artist Helen Allingham - By the cottage gate, Mayfield, East Sussex - comes up for auction in Bonhams' sale of 19th Century Pictures on 27 January 2011, estimated value £7,000 to £10,000. I must admit I hadn't come across this lady's work before. She illustrated the serialised edition of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd published in Cornhill Magazine in monthly instalments (1874) and was the first woman admitted as a full member of the Royal Watercolour Society.