It was a day of big names and big numbers at Trevanion and Dean’s latest auction as their autumn season of auctions started with some record breaking results.

On sale were a fascinating collection of letters which were unearthed in a routine house clearance and consigned to the firm’s September auction. The internationally important collection featured some of the biggest and most important names in the late 19th century art world, including members of the Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William Michael Rossetti, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, George Frederick Watts, John Macallan Swan, Alphonse Legros, Valentine Cameron Prinsep, William Strang, Robert Macaulay Stevenson, Sir Edward Poynter and Laurence Binyon.

The series of letters were all written to members of the Ionides family, a famous dynasty of British art patrons and collectors of Greek ancestry, the majority of which were addressed to Constantine Alexander Ionides (1833-1900) who is most well known for his bequest of over one thousand pictures, drawings and prints including eighty two oil paintings to the Victoria and Albert museum after his death in 1901.

The letters gave an insight and often revealing glimpses at the sometimes unknown relationship between patron and artist.

Auctioneer Aaron Dean said: “When we first started transcribing the letters it was just magical to see the type of dialogue that had been going back and forth constantly between patron and artist.

“Christina and I spent many long hours transcribing the letters, and it was wonderful to think that we were some of the first people to see these letters for many, many years’.

The letters unearthed by the team not only provided an insight into an exceptionally important art collector of his time, but also the subtle and often unknown relationships between artists and their patrons in the late 19th century.

The 66 letters, offered in thirty lots sold for £25,000 at the auction and the section was finished off with a standing ovation from the assembled crowd.

Aaron said: “It was so exciting to handle this internationally important collection – it really was the stuff that dreams are made of. We worked incredibly hard, not only in transcribing the letters but marketing them to all the right places. It was a record breaking and very memorable day!”