Emily Sargent's Watercolors Arrive At Auction After Decades Hidden In A Trunk

A group of watercolors by Emily Sargent, long hidden from view after their rediscovery in 1998, will go under the hammer on July 7 at Dreweatts in Newbury, offering a fresh test of appetite for an artist whose work has only recently begun to circulate more widely. Nineteen Emily Sargent works from the collection of Jemima Pitman, the siblings' great-niece, will be sold alongside seven works by John Singer Sargent, bringing the sale estimate to £489,000 ($658,000). The Emily group alone is estimated at up to £102,000 ($137,000).

The sale draws from a remarkable cache of 440 watercolors found in a forgotten trunk in 1998. By 2022, more than a third of those rediscovered works had been donated to museums, suggesting that the family archive has already begun to disperse into public collections. The auction now offers another measure of how the market is responding to Emily's work, which has moved from obscurity toward recognition in recent years.

Emily Sargent, who suffered the effects of a childhood spinal injury, began painting again in her 30s after the death of her father. Unlike her brother, she did not receive formal art training. John Singer Sargent studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence in the early 1870s before moving to Paris, while Emily developed her practice through travel and close looking, painting across Europe and North Africa on trips with him.

That difference is visible in the works themselves. Emily's watercolors tend to favor structure, atmosphere, and the measured placement of forms. In Figures in a Street, Camprodon (1902), the white facade of a three-story building catches the midday sun. A Domed Building, Tangier (1900) sets a stepped structure against a block of cloud. Overlooking Granada and A Pier, Hammamet, Tunisia push even closer to abstraction, reducing city and shoreline to bands of color and light.

Will Porter, co-head of modern and contemporary art at Dreweatts, said the works are“really accomplished,” adding that their handling of watercolor and light is comparable to much of John's work. He also noted that if the pictures were by John,“we would be adding a couple of zeros.”

The market has already shown signs of curiosity. A sand-swept desert landscape by Emily sold for $7,620 at Sotheby's New York in 2025. Whether July's sale confirms a broader reassessment or simply reflects a moment of discovery, it will likely sharpen attention on an artist whose work has remained quieter, and more personal, than her brother's.

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