Among the highlights was an oil portrait of a young female golfer by portraitist David Jagger (1891-1958), shown right.
The sitter is Joyce Rigby, a keen golfer who played to Dorset county standard with a handicap of five. She commissioned the portrait and it was completed in 1939, remaining in the family ever since. Given an attractive £15,000-20,000 guide, the 2ft x 2ft 6in work was pursued to £110,000 – a record for Jagger at auction.
Several portraits by the artist have dramatically outstripped guides over the last few years, including the 1917 work The Conscientious Objector, which sold at Bonhams last year for the previous record of £94,000 – more than 15 times its estimate.
A record also emerged at Bonhams sale, the current for English Surrealist painter Tristram Hillier (1905-83). The Lighthouse, a 20in x 2ft 1in (50 x 65cm) oil on canvas, painted around the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, took £85,000 against a £30,000- 50,000 guide. It had been purchased by the family of the vendor from Hillier’s London dealers Arthur Tooth & Sons.
The sum is almost double the previous high set in the same rooms in 2011 for Objects on a Beach, No.2 (1937), sold at £46,000.
