Fine Art

ONE of the more unusual characters of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Danish art was Sally Henriques (1815-1886). Firstly, contrary to what the name might suggest, Sally was a man. Secondly he was Jewish. And thirdly he painted for just four years from 1841-45 before becoming – in a neat reversal of the career of Georges Braque – a house painter.

It wasn’t until Campbell Archibald Mellon (1876-1955) retired from business at the end of the First World War that he devoted himself to painting. He moved to Gorleston-on-Sea in Norfolk and the bulk of his artistic output is focused on the beaches and holidaymakers in the area.

A second hand bookshop in Glasgow and two dealers are locked in a legal dispute over the ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours, valued at over £1m.

Matisse Picasso published by Tate Publishing with essays by six international curators including the two British curators John Golding and Elizabeth Cowling. ISBN 1854373927 £40 hb, ISBN 1854373765 £29.99 sb

Matisse Portraits by John Klein, published by Yale University Press. ISBN 0300081006 £35hb

Interpreting Matisse/Picasso by Elizabeth Cowling, published by Tate Publishing. ISBN 1854373935 £9.99 pbk

This large Highland hunting landscape by John Frederick Herring Senior proved to be the highlight of Sotheby’s annual auction series held last week at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland, when it sold for £470,000 (plus 19.5/10% premium) to London dealer Richard Green Fine Art bidding on the phone.

ON July 23 Bristol Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium) took the second highest price at auction for an oil by Hampshire artist Henry Garland (1854-1900). Back in December 1998 Bonhams Knightsbridge took a premium- inclusive £12,650 for the 3ft 4in by 5ft 7in (1.02 x 1.70m) oil Village Gossips.

Ever keen to come up with new auction formats that stimulate the interest of private buyers, Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) held their first sale of sporting and ornithological pictures combined with sporting guns at Knightsbridge on August 7-8.

Golf has always been a subject that can have a dramatic effect on the price levels of artists who normally make little impact in the salerooms. Take the case of Frank Watson Wood (1862-1953), a Berwick-on-Tweed watercolourist who specialised in landscapes and marines, the best examples of which fetch around £1500 at auction.

This muscular terracotta modellino of a moor, Il Moro, 2ft 75/8in high (80.5cm), attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), wrested the top slot from a powerfully modelled pair of 16th century bronzes in Sotheby’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) 174-lot European Sculpture and Works of Art 900-1900 auction on July 9.

WITH the Proms season now upon us it seems fitting that a portrait of the founder of the famous concerts, Sir Henry Wood, topped the pictures on offer at Bonhams Oxford (17.5% buyer’s premium) on June 25.

CONDITION is a prime concern in the 20th century print market but occasionally images come on the market that are so rare and so striking that condition concerns take a lower priority – particularly if the buyer has been searching for such a piece for 30 years.

FRANCE: Millon & Associés (17.5/ 13.5% buyer’s premium) June 26 sale included two watercolours taken from an album of drawings by Eugene Delacroix, which the artist presented to Count Charles de Mornay on their return from Morocco in 1832.

ITALY: A record price for a painting by Carlo Carrà was established in Italy back on May 21 in a sale of contemporary art held by Christie’s in Milan.

Russian Myths by Elizabeth Warner, published by the British Museum Press. ISBN 0714127434 £8.99pb

Family Photographs 1860-1945 by Robert Pole, published by the Public Record Office. ISBN 1903365201 £12.99pb

USA: The works of two American impressionists, Fern Isabel Coppedge (1888-1951) and Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927), both of whom were plein air painters whose works were admired for their fresh and colourful imagery, are featured here, together with a sample of the folksier treatment of rural America by Paul Seifert, a German fruit and vegetable farmer who took to painting as a lucrative sideline.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller’s small 1832 child portrait of the future Kaiser Franz Joseph as a Small Grenadier playing with toy soldiers, right, panel 13 x 11in (33.5 x 28cm), led the Wiener Kunst sale in Vienna on June 11 with a low-estimate €150,000 (£97,000).

Artists at Walberswick: East Anglian Interludes 1880-2000 by Richard Scott, published by Art Dictionaries Ltd. ISBN 0953260941 £29.95hb