However, he still has his band of well-heeled enthusiasts and the by-value success rate was a much healthier 83 per cent. Helping the total along to £61,715 was this signed watercolour, Ambrose and Lilette at the Garden Arch, Chateau St Privat, Languedoc. Consigned by a private vendor who bought it a number of years ago from Frost and Reed, it was inscribed by Flint to the backboard. Characteristic of the rather unfinished quality of the female in a landscape works by the artist, it led the Knightsbridge sale at an above-estimate £19,000.
The trade in original watercolours is holding up well generally but expert-in-charge Deborah Cliffe noted an almost complete lack of crossover buying between them and the prints, with a this section accounting for most of the failures. Even the best offering, Reclining Nude 1 from a 1965 edition of 850 from Frost and Reed and signed in pencil sold on its bottom estimate of £750.
Russell Flint can still strike a spark
UK: THE market for Sir William Russell Flint (1880-1969) may have dropped somewhat in recent years – to no noticeable sorrow among the more avant garde – and only 61 of the 101 prints and watercolours got away at Bonhams & Brooks’ (15 per cent buyer’s premium) in London on February 28 .
