Modern British Art

A raft of contemporary and post-war art featured in the busy August schedule in Scotland. Such art remains a picky and tempestuous market north of the border. The latest results were scattered with a mix of bullish and more subdued results.

Security shouldn’t be too much of a problem when opening a gallery space if one of your new neighbours is a former prime minister protected by armed guards. But aside from Tony Blair’s London residence down the road, Lyon & Turnbull had plenty of its own reasons for choosing Connaught Street, just north of Hyde Park, as the location for its new showroom.

Cavendish Morton became prominent as a landscape artist after the Second World War, focusing on pastoral and maritime themes, particularly in East Anglia, where he moved with his family in 1946.

As well as the Richard Platt consignment, David Lay offered more than 100 lots of modern art by a local Cornish family.

Southern softness and northern grit were both on display at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) of Leyburn on July 15.

Like many modern artists, John Bellany’s (1942-2013) canvases reflect his personal story – and his was a turbulent one.

The two galleries in Wales that fall under the umbrella of Martin Tinney celebrate local art in their summer shows.

Among the visitors coming to Bury Street gallery Rountree Tryon during London Art Week to view a painting of the doomed Lancastria was the youngest female survivor of that wartime tragedy.

“If I was a dealer, I’d buy the whole lot and put on a show. He’s a sort of great ‘undiscovered’ artist.” Mimi Lay of the Penzance auction house David Lay is referring to a consignment of graphic art by the 20th century painter and lithographer Richard Platt (b.1928).

Another work by CRW Nevinson (1889-1946) in the form of an aerial wartime print was offered in Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium) June 27 sale.

The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh’s next pair of exhibitions from July 21-August 28 features works of the birds and the boys.

“It is something, at the age of 31, to be among the most discussed, most successful, most promising, most admired and most hated British artists.” So wrote the critic Charles Lewis Hind about the war artist CRW Nevinson (1889-1946) in 1920.

A London street view by the northern English artist Harry Rutherford (1903-85) led the sale at Chiswick Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) on June 13.

Painter who fled London to create country scenes is now the subject of a Holborn show...

More than 600 people crowded into Clark Art in Cheshire on June 15 for the opening night of its annual exhibition on northern English painting.