Fine Art

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, all sold below £1000 including a watercolour of a North African market scene by Hercules Brabazon Brabazon.

Figurative art was the other big seller in early September, led by the waxwork of Medardo Rosso’s sculpture Bambina Ridente (see last week’s News pages) which topped a successful week of sales at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) when it more than doubled the top estimate at £180,000.

The relaunched British Art Fair opened with a flurry of sales at its new London venue, the Saatchi Gallery.

In the past, pictures by talented but obscure female artists were given short shrift on the secondary market. Now all that is changing.

Two contrasting marine scenes, encapsulating the unpredictable nature of the sea, were offered at a recent sale at Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium) of Cockermouth in Cumbria.

The Old Masters section of Doyle’s auction in New York on October 31 will include a portrait by the French 19th century artist Eugène Delacroix.

For most enthusiasts of Airfix’s plastic construction kits, it was the company’s dramatic box artwork that caught the eye when choosing the next model to make.

Portraiture was not the preferred genre of the Valencian artist Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923), but early in his career he recognised its value as a reliable source of income and persisted with it throughout his lifetime.

A standout portrait entry to Essex saleroom Sworders (23% buyer’s premium) was a 4ft 2in x 3ft 4in (1.26 x 1.01m) oil on canvas portrait attributed to Francis Cotes (1726-70).

Gracing the catalogue cover of Whyte’s Irish & International Art auction in Dublin on October 1 is this work by Séan Keating (1889-1977).

A large panel painting by the Flemish artist Frans Francken II (1581-1642) is to appear at Ivoire Troyes’ Auction in France on September 29.

Wintry scenes by two local artists created a brighter picture at a recent auction in Yorkshire.

Described by one of his biographers as ‘The Last of the Norwich School’, Leonard Squirrell (1893-1979) was an East Anglian man through and through.

A view of a Tyneside street by Spennymoor mining artist Norman Cornish (1919-2014) took £5500 at local auction house Anderson & Garland (20% buyer’s premium).

The British Art Fair is an annual feeding ground for collectors of modern and post-war British art. This year’s staging of the 30-year-old event, which runs from September 20-23, marks a new chapter for the fair as it moves to London’s Saatchi Gallery.

Among the most iconic works of David Hockney’s (b.1937) output was his Paper Pools series, focusing on the private Californian swimming pools he experienced in the late 1970s.