Extraordinary collection of photographs gives a window into early days of motoring
Ihave always been passionate about old cars and I am excited by the sale of The Tim Harding Collection of Motoring Photographs at Toovey’s. Like the Goodwood Revival these photos provide a window into a time now past from the earliest days of motoring
The collection reflects a lifetime of collecting by the author and motoring enthusiast, Tim Harding, and gives voice to his encyclopaedic knowledge of early and rare vehicle marques.
Take for example the photograph of the Marseal Trade Stand. The company was founded by the pilot Captain Donald Marcus Kelway Marendaz who was invalided out of the Royal Flying Corps in 1918. The company would take on the name Marseal in 1923. Later he raced at Brooklands and produced motorcars reminiscent of W O Bentley’s under the name DMK Marendaz.
I love the scene before an elegant country house where William Sherbrooke is captured with his Bentleys by the celebrated motoring photographer Chas Bowers.
Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox were part of the popular 1930s Crazy Gang. Jimmy’s grandfather and father were both circus owners and Teddy began as a juggler. Their early career was defined by their acrobatic dancing. Here you see them in an early Aston Martin.
The collection comprises photographs in most formats from full plate to ‘box brownie’. The images, well over 20,000 in number, cover the period from the very earliest days of motoring to the early post war era. Most are loose but some are framed and mounted, and there are also family albums compiled in period.
While mainly focused on cars, the collection also covers commercial vehicles, cyclecars, motorcycles, racing cars, motorsport generally, trials, rallies and racing including Brooklands. Some lots cover period garages and workshops, others motor accidents, as well as postcards of motoring in topographical settings.
This extraordinary collection provides a remarkable window into a glorious age of early motoring.
The collection also includes automobilia such as manufacturers’ catalogues from the ’20s and ’30s, and dealers’ brochures.
Tim Harding died in 2018 and part of the collection is now to be sold in a Toovey’s specialist auction at their Washington salerooms in West Sussex, on October 27.
Such is the size of the collection that this will be the first of two sales.
Rupert Toovey is a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington – tooveys. com – and a priest in the Church of England Diocese of Chichester