A garden path by Joseph Farquharson – £5000 at Halls.
However, it was a contrasting garden scene that attracted interest at a recent sale at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) of Shewsbury. The 17½ x 11½in (44.5 x 29cm) signed oil on canvas depicted a garden path passing under a rose arch and with an herbaceous border to one side.
Farquharson painted prolifically and, as well as his trademark mix of sheep, heather and swirling snow, other subjects included figurative works, woodland scenes and even some Orientalist pictures.
He also completed a number of works depicting gardens, in particular the elegant flower garden at his Finzean estate in Aberdeenshire (of which he was the 12th Laird). These pictures do crop up on the market fairly regularly and tend to find appeal from the both the artist’s followers and collectors more focused on horticulture. The highest price for such a work was A corner of my garden, a finely detailed composition sold at Christie’s New York for $40,000 (£25,170) in 2011.
Closer to home, Bonhams sold an example of similar size to the Halls’ picture for £4000 in October last year, while Lyon & Turnbull offered a larger garden view, also centring on a pink rose bush, that made £5500 two months later.
Appropriately offered at Halls’ Spring Auction on March 23, the picture in Shrewsbury was pitched at £2000-3000. After generating competition, it was carried over estimate and was knocked down to an online bidder from Scotland at £5000, a decent sum in the current climate for a work of this size.
