Watercolours

An 1817 miniature of Napoleon by British painter Henry Bone (1755-1834) is among the highlights at Ellison Fine Art’s exhibition of portrait miniatures this month.

Nicky Gould of Gould Antiques offers a range of small items including portrait miniatures, perfume bottles and various objects of vertu from the 16th-20th centuries. She next exhibits at Olympia.

Andrew Newell Wyeth (1917-2009), one of America’s best-known artists of the mid-20th century, focused on provincial landscapes and the people in them.

A rare opportunity to own a watercolour by Prince Charles (b.1948) presented itself when items belonging to the former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his wife Mary were put up for sale at Hansons (20% buyer’s premium).

A watercolour of a thoroughbred racehorse auction appeared at Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) of Prinknash Abbey Park, Gloucestershire, on May 21 – 123 years to the day since it had itself last sold at auction.

The American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is best known for the high-society ‘swagger’ portraits that had earned him fame and fortune, but the watercolours he produced in greater number are more commonly available at auction.

A watercolour by John Nixon (1755-1818) showing St Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London from Regent’s Park in the early days of the land’s development is offered at Guy Peppiatt Fine Art for £6500.

At an uncertain time bidders are assertive when the best and not the rest comes up at auction.

George Catlin’s watercolour sketches of North American Indians, reported in ATG No 2387, were the star turns as far as original artworks were concerned at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on March 28. However, two original, signed caricatures by Max Beerbohm also brought good results.

This gouache is one of around 10 drawings, watercolours and gouaches by René Gruau, the Italian-born fashion illustrator who was renowned for his Paris haute couture and promotional illustrations, which will feature in Tajan’s Paris auction of modern drawings on May 15.

A watercolour of Lindisfarne Priory off the Northumberland coast sold for more than 12 times its guide at Taunton saleroom Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium).

Stephen Ongpin deals in drawings and watercolours from the 16th-20th centuries in London, St James’s.

A significant collection of pictures by the Victorian watercolourist Albert Goodwin (1845-1932) was a near sell-out at auction in Suffolk and generated just under £120,000.

Previously unpublished sketches and letters by the American artist and traveller George Catlin (1796-1872) attracted multiple bidders at Forum Auctions in London.