Pick of the week

Anne Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen, used to say that her work would only be taken seriously after her death; it would be truer to say ‘more seriously’, as, long before her death in 2007, her hand-modelled figures in tin-glazed earthenware were avidly sought after. Vegetables, her best-known speciality, won her the sobriquet of the Cabbage Lady, but her birds, exotic and domestic, are also near-miraculous.

Although her husband, Alastair, eventually succeeded his brothers to become the 6th Marquess, they had to make money and she was very professional indeed. A lifelong friend from her student days at Camberwell was Alan Caiger-smith, who taught her much about tin-glaze, and she was a formidable worker. Alastair himself was a painter with the rare ability to make botanical illustration interesting as art.

Lady Anne’s show of 74 single or paired models (above) recently closed at Albert Amor in St James’s, SW1, and it has been a near sell-out, with prices ranging from £480 up to £8,000. Buyers will be congratulating themselves.

Anne’s daughter, Lady Emma Foale, began as a designer at an almost indecently young age and she has moved through several disciplines to her present career as a portrait painter. However, confusingly, she is not the subject of a show that began with Rountree Tryon around a corner in St James’s from Amor, and has now moved to the gallery’s West Sussex base at Petworth, until June 7. This artist is Emma Foale’s near-contemporary Emma Faull, painter of birds, for the most part in watercolour, crayon or ink with gouache, and etchings. She has as accurate an eye for birdlife, especially swans (below) and parrots. Her friezes of wildflowers are reminiscent of the 19th-century Irish watercolourist Andrew Nicholl, but with birds among them, rather than distant views of coastal towns. Prices run from £950 for etchings to £4,500 for large watercolours.