19th Century British Art

At an uncertain time bidders are assertive when the best and not the rest comes up at auction.

George Catlin’s watercolour sketches of North American Indians, reported in ATG No 2387, were the star turns as far as original artworks were concerned at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on March 28. However, two original, signed caricatures by Max Beerbohm also brought good results.

A collaborative portrait between two revered 19th century equestrian painters will lead a sale of sporting art at Essex saleroom Sworders on April 30.

A watercolour of Lindisfarne Priory off the Northumberland coast sold for more than 12 times its guide at Taunton saleroom Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium).

This Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803- 1902) cattle landscape resurfaced at an auction in Leominster after a century in the same collection.

After abandoning his early career as a contributor to Punch and the Illustrated London News, Myles Birket Foster (1825-99) went on to establish his reputation as a painter of technically skilled and highly polished watercolours, depicting landscapes and rustic subjects from Scotland to the Mediterranean.

The last panoramic painting by William Powell Frith (1819-1909) in private hands has been sold – but will not vanish from the public eye just yet.

London Judaica dealer Joseph Landau travelled to Sworders in Stansted Moutfitchet on March 13 with the sole purpose of buying a pencil, charcoal and white chalk drawing Carrying the Torah by Simeon Solomon (1840-1905).

Two previously unpublished ink sketches by John Constable (1776 -1837) excelled at Chiswick Auctions’ latest British & European Fine Art sale.

Helped by conservatively pitched estimates, a clutch of middle-market Orientalist pictures achieved some modest growth in value on their first return to auction in three decades.

Bonhams’ (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) latest sale of 19th century pictures in London may have been small – running to just over 100 lots – but what it lacked in size it made up with the broad scope of its contents.

This study (below) was one of 10 drawings by Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) consigned by an unidentified charitable trust to Bonhams’ 19th Century European, Victorian and British Impressionist Art sale on February 20.

Drawing interest from the US was a portrait of a fierce-looking Scottish laird by John Pettie (1839-93).

A lengthy provenance was key to the success of a large watercolour by the 19th century artist David Cox (1783-1859).

A 19th century masterpiece by William Powell Frith (1819- 1909) that serves as a who’s who of influential Victorians is on offer from a new St James’s gallery for £10m.

Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was the toast of London during the latest Victorian art sales held in the capital, where buyers continued to covet blue-chip Pre-Raphaelite art, market-fresh material – and invest in female names.

A trademark nocturnal scene by Victorian painter John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-93) got away on low estimate for £80,000 at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Haslemere in Surrey.

The Victorian Conservative politician Lord Coventry is believed to have commissioned this portrait of favourite hounds Rambler and Marksman.