Chiswick Auctions

Ornithological books and artworks have played their part in the success of two recent sales and a selection of just a few of those lots begins with books from the Ladwell library.

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (1906-96) was one of those artists who took little pleasure in selling their work. Indeed, Motesiczky’s obituary in The Independent described her “aristocratic disdain for the marketplace” and stated that “while she half welcomed exhibitions, they remained uncomfortable experiences… she never needed to sell her paintings, indeed she preferred to keep them around her.”

Two previously unpublished ink sketches by John Constable (1776 -1837) excelled at Chiswick Auctions’ latest British & European Fine Art sale.

Helped by conservatively pitched estimates, a clutch of middle-market Orientalist pictures achieved some modest growth in value on their first return to auction in three decades.

Billed as a private London collection, the February 5 sale at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) betrayed a single owner with a good eye and wide-ranging enthusiasms.

Chiswick Auctions has hired former Bonhams auctioneer Bruce Addison to head a new Scottish office.

Topping a number of good pre-Christmas clock sales was a rare table/bracket clock, among the last made by London ‘Golden Age’ name Daniel Quare (1649-1724) with Stephen Horseman, who became his partner at the Exchange Alley workshop in 1721.

Dated 1536 and printed in Antwerp, a defective copy of what is known as the ‘mole’ edition of Tyndale’s Newe Testament – so called from the mole (or perhaps hedgehog) depicted on a stone on which St Paul’s foot is resting in one of the many woodcut illustrations – made £30,000 in a recent London sale.

Sold for £1900 in a recent London sale was an 1892 first of Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency – a record for this particular work.