Lot 315: * Morton-Sale (Isobel, 1904-1992). Mother with

* Morton-Sale (Isobel, 1904-1992). Mother with children, watercolour, of a mother showing the newborn baby to her small daughter, signed in pencil, 37 x 27.2cm (14.5 x 10.75ins), oval mount, framed and glazed. Isobel Morton-Sale was an artist and illustrator born into a Chelsea family which moved in literary and artistic circles, where the Rossettis and their friends were still remembered. Her love of drawing was apparent from an early age. She went to the Central School of Art, where she met fellow-artist John Morton-Sale, whom she married in 1924. Although their work is quite distinct they were aninspiration to each other. Together they founded the Parnassus Gallery, well-known for outstanding reproductions of great and lesser-known works of art. Isobel"s work was exhibited from 1979 to 1983 at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and a retrospective exhibition of paintings by both John and Isobel was held at the Maas Gallery, in London, in 1984. Her work is characterised by a distinct delicacy of style and sensitivity of colour, and although she had an acuteness of observation, a sense of enchantment in her paintings pervades the realism of the captured moment. (1)