Modern British Art

A Pre-Raphaelite drawing once owned by LS Lowry drew lively competition at the latest round of 19th century art sales in London.

Tennants credited “fresh-to-market pictures with a strong provenance” as the driving force behind the notable results in its Modern and Contemporary Art sale.

Denys Wilcox of The Court Gallery specialises in British and French art from 1880 to the late 20th century with an emphasis on English Post-Impressionism and the Paris School. He recently published 'The Art of Doris Hatt'.

After a bullish 2018 for the major Modern British art sales in London – during which Christie’s posted its strongest evening sale to date – results from the first ‘Mod Brit’ series of 2019 looked a little flat by comparison.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

In what could well be a first, all 10 of Christie’s top evening sale lots on June 17 were sculptures. The group comprised the works of four blue-chip sculptors – Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink and Barry Flanagan – and contributed much of the overall total at £11.3m.

A Cricket Match (1938) by Mod Brit giant LS Lowry (1887-1976) was the fitting headliner at Sotheby’s. Offered in the midst of the Cricket World Cup, the 18in x 2ft (46 x 61cm) oil on canvas showing a back-street match played by local children in Salford sold for a mid-estimate £950,000 to a UK private buyer.

Much of the pre-sale publicity from Bonhams’ June 15 Mod Brit focused on Eric Gill’s (1882-1942) Girl with a Comb in her Hair (1928) – a market-fresh carved head and torso valued at £200,000-300,000 and admired for its unusual pose and luxuriant wavy hair.

Abbott and Holder offers this 1940 oil on canvas of Regents Canal, Paddington, as part of a large, single-owner collection on offer in the Bloomsbury gallery.

A study for the mysterious painting 'Allegory' by Thomas Monnington (1902-76) features in Liss Llewellyn’s exhibition of religious art in 20th century Britain. It shows a nude man and woman before a tree, an overt visual reference to Adam and Eve, but one which the artist denied.

An Edward Seago painting, The Thames at Henley, is among the highlights at the annual summer sale held at Thomson’s Gallery in Aldeburgh.

Percy Kelly (1918-93) was so averse to the limelight that only a few of his paintings were ever shown publicly during his life. But a major retrospective in 2015 and a birth centenary last year has helped raise the Cumbrian artist’s profile – and his prices.

Tentatively guided at £200-400, this watercolour of an unknown sitter below attributed to the painter and sculptor Glyn Philpot (1884-1937) attracted multiple bids in Cardiff.

In the spring of 1940, Eric Ravilious (1903-42) spent three weeks in Grimsby during his role as a war artist.

Miners heading to work in the early morning with lit lamps, denizens of northern pubs with flat caps and pipes, women pushing prams or hanging up the washing: these figures populate the works of Norman Cornish (1919-2014), the ‘pitman painter’.

This abstract oil on paper is among the works on paper by the modern British painter Adrian Heath (1920-92) currently on show at St James’s gallery Alan Wheatley Art.

A portrait by Augustus John (1878-1961) of his daughter Gwyneth Johnstone attracted keen attention at auction in Cambridge last week.

Edward Bawden (1903-89) produced his celebrated print, Liverpool Street Station, in 1961. He knew the station well – using it regularly when travelling between London and his home in Great Bardfield, Essex.

Connect – The Independent Art Fair, which debuted at London’s Mall Galleries in January, has added a June event to the 2020 calendar.