The painting is an example of Sargent in his experimental mode. It is a large-scale landscape in the English manner, but painted in a modernist French style. Due to the size of the painting, it was clearly composed with exhibition in mind, and it appeared in Joe Comyns Carr's New Gallery the year after it was painted.
A friend and protégé of Claude Monet and a member of the British avant-garde, Sargent was yet to be fully accepted by either critics or the public at the time this picture was painted. As with many of his previous pictures, A Game of Bowls was classed as 'eccentric'.
The painting had been on loan to the National Trust as part of Ightham Mote's 2018 John Singer Sargent exhibition.
The painting was purchased with funding from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and from funds raised thanks to the generosity of visitors and supporters of Ightham Mote.
A pair of display cabinets with Boulle marquetry to Charlecote Park
A pair of display cabinets on stands was accepted in lieu of inheritance tax by the Government and allocated to the National Trust for display at Charlecote Park.
The cabinets, probably of English manufacture, date to c. 1815-20, with 17th-century marquetry panels. The drawers on the cabinet are veneered with three square panels in Boulle marquetry with red-tortoiseshell inlay on a pewter ground. They are raised on tables with spirally turned legs, each headed with the Latimer cross, a favourite heraldic emblem of William Beckford.
Beckford – the English novelist, critic, art collector and patron – was forced to sell his collection in the legendary Fonthill Abbey sale of 1822. George Hammond Lucy was one of the most enthusiastic buyers at the sale, acquiring exotic furniture, ceramics and metalwork for Charlecote, including these cabinets.