Drawings & Pastels

Exactly a week before Harry Rutherford’s ‘Camden Town’ painting sold in London (see separate Art Market story this edition), a small undated sketch, Female Nude, by his prolific mentor and tutor Walter Sickert (1860-1942) cropped up in Kent.

Karen Taylor Fine Art’s exhibition of British drawings, watercolours and oils takes place from 30 June-July 7 at Illustrationcupboard Gallery in St James’s.

An enticingly estimated drawing by the 17th century English court portraitist Sir Peter Lely offered for sale in a French provincial auction drew a flurry of attention from English trade and private bidders last week. It was propelled to over 20-times its estimate.

A selection of drawings by the French painter-explorer André Maire (1898-1984) comes to the Dumonteil Gallery in Paris for the exhibition Indochina, Meeting Men and Gods.

This drawing of a young girl by the Dutch-born artist Sir Peter Lely (1618-80), who was official portrait painter to the English court, features in a sale at Ivoire Nantes on June 13.

A sketchbook by the Bavarian artist Georg Johann Scharf (1788-1860) was discovered recently by ephemera dealer Valerie Jackson-Harris at the Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Park.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

Francis Picabia (1879-1953) famously declared that he wanted to change his ideas “as often as one would change one’s shirt”, and he embraced many different artistic styles throughout his life.

More than 130 original artworks by the artist, sometimes savage political cartoonist and stage designer, Gerald Scarfe, were offered by Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on April 5.

From Arthur Rackham to Gerald Scarfe, there is a burgeoning market for original illustration art of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The name of William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) is enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary. Definition: “Ingeniously or ridiculously over-complicated in design or construction”.

Nearly a quarter of the sale total at the auction held by Harry Moore-Gwyn at 25 Blythe Road (20% buyer’s premium) in West Kensington on April 5 came from a collection of original cartoons.

Marielle Barde, Edgar Degas’ great-niece, was one of the heirs and vendors of the Degas studio drawings and attended Christie’s Paris sale. This was the second such dispersal the family had held in these rooms of artworks from her famous great-uncle following a house move some decades ago.

While Degas’ youthful drawings produced some notable individual prices in Drawings Week, it is the classic charcoal and pastel drawings of Parisian dancers and workers from his mature years that are the most commercially popular (the current work on paper record is the premium-inclusive $37m/ £23.35m/€29m paid for Danseuse au repos of 1879 at Sotheby’s New York in 2008).

Among the raft of dedicated works on paper auctions staged for the recent Drawings Week in Paris were two market-fresh sales devoted to family collections of works by a single French artist.

It may have been under 2in (5cm) high, but a tiny ink drawing by Aubrey Beardsley sold for a sizeable $10,000 (£8000) in a sale of Illustration Art held by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in New York on March 21.