Fine Art

PAINTINGS offered at Lyon & Turnbull’s (17.5% buyer's premium) July 21 Jordantone dispersal were mostly comfortable furnishing pictures of some quality including this uncharacteristic Joseph Farquharson oil, right, entitled Fisherwoman on a Deserted Sandy Beach. Very different from the artist’s trademark mix of sheep, heather and swirling snow, the 22in x 3ft (55x 91cm) image of a solitary figure walking barefoot on the shimmering sand went to a private buyer at £17,000.

ON view at the Belgrave Gallery, St Ives, these two works by the late Sir Terry Frost represent a gap of some 60 years.

SOME steady selling of material which has been hard to shift of late provided some encouragement for the trade generally at Lawrences of Bletchingley's (12.5 buyer's premium) July 20-22 sale and among the 2000 lots – which totalled nearly £200,000 – there were enough of those quirky offerings which make provincial British auctions the fascinating events they can be.

One of the most mysterious objects in Bonhams’ Made in Scotland sale from August 18-20, was a fascinating 18th century anamorphic painting – one of a whole class of pictures that required cylindrical mirrors to view the true image.

ONE of the most exciting aspects of the ever-growing interest in 20th century British art is the opportunity it offers to rediscover significant, but neglected, talent of the period. For those with a keen eye and prepared to look beyond the mere ‘big’ names, there really are some impressive things out in the market place. Such works, of course, also have the added bonus, more often than not, of falling into the category of affordability.

THE latest figures published by Customs and Excise show a large decline in fine art imports to the UK for 2003.

IN The Sunday Telegraph of July 25, Sarah Jane Checkland offered that old chestnut “what paintings sell”. Much of the analysis was predictable – “paintings of women and children outstrip those of men and the younger and more attractive the better” and “prospects are grim for dead animals”. However, a few results of her survey were more intriguing.

KATE Dickens adored her father but found the situation at home after her parents’ separation to be intolerable and in 1860, desperate to get away, she entered into what was to prove a less than happy marriage to Wilkie Collins’ younger brother Charles.

HIGHLIGHT of Sotheby’s (23.92/14.35% buyer's premium) book and manuscript sale on June 30 was Antonin Artaud’s 1947 portrait of his publisher Alain Gheerbrant, pencil, 14 x 20in (35 x 50cm), seen right, that made a double-estimate €210,000 (£140,000) to set a record for an Artaud drawing.

ATTEMPTING to tap into the burgeoning Russian market, Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) appointed Moscow-born Tatyana Barysheva as in-house specialist last year. She is gradually building up a following for sales of Russian silver, vertu and works of art.

THESE two half-length images of women, right, could hardly be more different in date or technique, but their prices proved as uncannily similar as their poses when they came under the hammer at recent fine art auctions.

A 56-sheet sketch book by Camille Pissarro, 8 x 11in (21 x 28cm), dating from his stay in Venezuela between April and August 1854, sold for €150,000 (£100,000) at Piasa (20.33/13.16% buyer's premium) on June 18.

A Christie’s New York sale of June 9 included a collection of Dr Seuss books, illustrated letters and other ephemera formed by Jed Mattes, who in 1977, following the death of Theodor Geisel’s long-term agent Phyllis Jackson, took over as his representative.

A LARGE scale oil by Kathleen Hale of Orlando Reclining Amongst Flowers failed to sell against a £10,000-15,000 estimate at Sotheby’s on July 8, but the autograph draft manuscript of Orlando (The Marmalade Cat) becomes a Doctor of 1944, right, each page with pencil and coloured crayon drawings (some with added wash or gouache, a few unfinished) did sell at £5000 to a London gallery.

THE pencilled Assumption (with white highlights), 20 x 15in (50 x 37cm), shown right, turned up at Doutrebente on June 25 with a €4000 estimate.

SOTHEBY’S have announced that they are merging their Modern British art and Victorian art departments to create a new one called British Art 1850 – Present Day.

“WHEN Mr Woods came into our saleroom and invited us to see his collection,” said Anderson & Garland’s collectables specialist John Anderson, “we just couldn’t believe that such a unique selection of memorabilia could have been sitting in a house only a dozen miles from our premises.”

IT was, perhaps, a telling sign of the current shortage of high-quality, market-fresh Old Master paintings in the salerooms that Bonhams (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) July 7 Old Master Paintings sale should be headed by this hitherto unrecorded John Constable (1776-1837) plein air oil on canvas sketch, right, of the artist’s home village, East Bergholt.

BASED in Stoke-on-Trent, auctioneers Louis Taylor (buyer’s premium 12.5 per cent) are better known for their ceramics than their pictures but their quarterly Fine sale held from June 14-16 was led by this Dorothea Sharp oil on canvas, right, Children with a Dog on a Summer’s Day.

DECADES before Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde sheep and the 1990s explosion of Britart, London was swinging to the rhythm of Pop Art’s movers and shakers. Forty years have now passed since the height of this international movement prompting Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) to host the first of what they hope will become an annual Pop Art themed sale on June 30.