30 JUNE 2007, Page 56

There's something magical about seeing museum-qual

There's something magical about seeing museum-quality pictures in a private, infor- mal space, perhaps the nearest many of us come to having them in our own homes. In Landscape on Paper, at W/S Fine Art Ltd (160 New Bond Street, London Wl, until 6 July), Andrew Wyld has put together an exceptional group of British watercolours, paintings and drawings, dating from 1650 to 1850, and ranging from Wenceslaus Holiar to Edward Lear by way of Constable, Turner and Gainsborough. The fact that they are for sale is not so astonishing as their relatively accessible prices. Admittedly, a Turner watercolour of the valley of the Washburn in Yorkshire will set you back more than a quarter of a million, so his peaceful, spacious prospect of Mainz on the Rhine (pictured), designated 'price on application', will be in excess of that. But John Sell Cotman's delicious watercolour of the north side of the South Gate, Yarmouth, is £27,500, and another of my favourites, Alexander Cozens's expressive ink drawing 'Villa by a Lake', is just £6,500. And there's a lovely oil on paper 'Sunrise over Downland' by William James Muller for that price, as well as mouth-watering things by Bonington, De Wint and John Varley. Recommended. AL