Drawings & Pastels

Accessible art is the aim of North Yorkshire dealer who hopes to enthuse a younger crowd

Thomas Sandby’s (1721-98) architectural drawings are significant part of the artist’s oeuvre.

The market for drawings and watercolours, both modern and traditional, has long been regarded as delicate ground – sensitive towards estimates, market freshness and condition.

Compared to oil paintings and watercolours, drawings by the Scottish Colourists seem to appear less often at auction.

Among the 20th century works on paper generating demand at regional sales in the last few months was a Keith Vaughan (1912-77) study of a group of bathers.

A Picasso drawing found in a cupboard has been sold at a French auction house for €158,000 (£135,000) or €192,759 including buyer’s premium.

Bid to £4000 – 10 times low estimate – in a May 18 sale held by Tennants (22% buyer’s premium) of Leyburn were two albums of what were defined as grotesque-style caricature portraits.

Museums and collectors were not deterred by the Paris event’s date being pushed back.

A look at highlights from dealers and summer auctions in the UK.

Summer highlights from auctions and dealers.

“It is quite pathetic to see the Prince and Freda. His love is so obvious and undisguisable.”

One of only a small number of drawings by Michelangelo still remaining in private hands sold for €20m (£16.9m) at Christie’s Paris last week.

Among the salerooms in Paris holding auctions of drawings, or sales with a drawing section, around the time of the Salon du Dessin is Christie’s.

This street scene by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) will feature in the sale of Old Master and Modern drawings from 1500-1900 to be held by Millon on May 19 at Drouot in Paris.

In February 2020 Lancashire saleroom Gerrards (20% buyer’s premium) sold a watercolour by Trinidad’s first internationally known artist, Michel-Jean Cazabon (1813-88), for £24,000 (see News, ATG No 2430).

Ader is holding a sale of Old Master drawings on May 20 at Drouot in Paris.

Paris opens its doors to the world of drawings later this month with three dedicated fairs plus a selection of auctions featuring works on paper and a raft of drawing-related events in the city’s museums – all under the umbrella of the 'Semaine du Dessin' (or Drawing Week).

The expansion in prices for David Hockney (b.1937) has affected not just his large and famous works which now sell for multi-millions but also his smaller drawings and printed works that fall further down the price scale.

In his next exhibition London dealer Guy Peppiatt focuses on the drawings of John Downman (1750-1824) and George Romney (1734-1802), two contemporaneous British artists who at first glance seem very different.