Again this was a dispersal to benefit a charitable cause, in this case the Foundation established by Sir Ralph’s wife Meriel, who died last year, to benefit British actors who have fallen upon hard times.The 349 lots netted £613,150.
As with Sir John’s sale, Modern British paintings provided several of the highest prices but the top lot of the day came from his small collection of antiquities. The ancient Egyptian diorite relief fragment pictured, dated to the 30th dynasty/early Ptolemaic period, sailed past its £15,000-20,000 estimate to sell for £55,000 to a London dealer.
The 7x 53/4in (18 x 13cm) stone fragment carved with the profiled outline of a god has provenances going back to 1911 to the Hilton-Price Collection followed by those of Henry Oppenheim (sold 1936) and E.L. Paget (1949). It is also similar to a fragment carved with the head of Isis or a queen from the Fouquet collection sold by the auctioneers’ New York room in 1998 for $190,000 (£113,770).
This was always going to be the most expensive piece in the small 23-lot antiquities section of the sale but many of the other entries easily surpassed what were often very modest estimates. These included a 7th century BC Cypriot pottery spout and handle from a jug in the form of a bull’s head which made £2200 against a £200-300 estimate, and a Late Period 9in (23cm) long Egyptian wood figure of the Jackal god Anubis, shown couchant, at £3000.
Scene stealers put on a fine show on Sotheby’s stage…
Having dispersed the collection of Sir John Gielgud early last month Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) went on to offer that of his good friend, fellow thespian and fellow knight of the realm, the late Sir Ralph Richardson, on April 27.
