Vera Southby (British, 1895-1987) A Peking Gardener; A Yunnanese lady, a set of two the former signed and inscribed 'PEKING GARDNER/V. SOUTHBY' (lower right) watercolour and charcoal one 41.9 x 32.4cm (16 1/2 x 12 3/4in); the other 33 x 23.2cm (13 x 9 1/8in) both mounted but unframed. Together with five figure studies in pencil by the same hand, one signed and inscribed 'SOUTHBY/PEKING' (lower right), the largest 39.7 x 29.9cm (15 5/8 x 11 3/4in), the smallest 27.3 x 22.6cm (10 3/4 x 8 7/8in), all mounted but unframed. (7) Footnotes: Provenance The artist's family. Private collection, UK. With Martyn Gregory, London. Vera Southby was born in Cape Town, South Africa, daughter of British parents, the Rev. and Mrs Philip Southby. They lived on the Karoo at Prince Albert, near Cape Town. She returned to England with her family at the age of four and they settled in Somerset. After leaving school, she studied art at Bristol, the London School of Art, the Chelsea Polytechnic and finally in Rome at the Scuola Britannica. At the London School of Art, she studied under Professor Jean Paul Rosier, a Belgian portrait and figure painter, and Richard Jack and George Belcher. The artist recalls that Thomas Monnington was a pupil there at that time. At the Scuola Britannica she studied under Professor Lipinski for one year in 1921. From 1921 to 1925 she painted extensively on the Continent, North Africa and Persia. After two periods of study in Vienna with Professor Joseph Binder, she left for China where she stayed with friends in Kunming. In 1927 she married the manager of a well known shipping company and for the next six years spent her time painting beside the Yangtze and in the cities of Tientsin and Peking. She left China for Europe for two or three years but returned to live in Peking and Shanghai in 1935. When war broke out between Japan and China she was interned in Shanghai with other Europeans. In 1946, Vera Southby remarried in Shanghai. She and her husband, Björn Ake Hartman (1905-1977), travelled extensively in the Far East, including to Hong Kong, Vietnam and India. Southby had several solo shows (Shanghai 1929; Alpine Galleries, London 1935; De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco 1950/51) and exhibited frequently at various institutions: The Royal Academy, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, Goupil Gallery Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Manchester City Art Gallery New English Art Club, Society of Women Artists. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: AR AR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing