A busy autumn schedule for London’s auction houses demonstrated the continuing global appetite for the top names in Modern British and Irish Art, marking a continued desire for works within the secondary market.
The start of the season began with Christie’s evening sale. 27 of the 29 lots on offer sold, led by L.S. Lowry’s Going to The Match achieving a new world record price of £7,846,500. The purchasers of the 1935 painting, The Law Family Charitable Foundation, are due to return the work to The Lowry museum, Salford for permanent public display.
Day sale results were altogether encouraging, where it felt clear from the start that turbulent political events of the week would not deter the strength of results: prices throughout held well above pre-sale estimate and totalling £6,234,039 overall. Lowry remained unsurprisingly strong following the record oil, and abstract works by St Ives artists Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron achieved equally good results. St Just 1951, a work closely related to Lanyon’s symbolic large-scale oil of the same name painted two years later, set a new artist record for a work on paper (£75,600), whilst Adrian Heath’s bold oil Painting in Orange and Purple, 1956, also surpassed expectations. Last exhibited publicly by the British Council in 1962, this private painting sold over two and a half times its high estimate (£163,800), setting a new world record for the artist at auction.
Heath also saw desirable results at Bonhams. The November sale featured a 1962 oil, Red Painting which sold for £75,900 against an estimate of £20,000 – 30,000. Records were broken across both New Bond Street and Knightsbridge salerooms, with Duncan Grant’s early portrait of Vanessa Bell leading the way at £327,900 and Ithell Colquhoun’s botanical oil Anthurium celebrating British surrealism, reaching a noteworthy price of £258,600 (estimate £8,000-12,000). Fellow British surrealists performed well across both auction houses, most notably Tristram Hillier’s colourful Barns in Winter at Christie’s (£40,320) and Bonhams’ Una Ermita (£44,400) selling over five times their given low estimates.
With trading of digital art and NFTs falling by 97% since January 2022*, sale results for Modern British artworks are undoubtedly positive by comparison, despite some recently falling short of expected estimate. Edward Burra’s intricate and mysterious watercolours of urban life and landscapes for instance, show little indication of improving after top examples by the artist failed to hammer at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s this year. There are signs of increasing selectivity in the Henry Moore market after several works on paper went unsold, and bronze maquettes made near low estimate, while bronzes by Elisabeth Frink and Barbara Hepworth also struggled at Sotheby’s this season: both Seated Man II and Curved Form (Bryher), two of the top value lots of the auction, were bought in.
For the most part, it appears buyers are becoming reluctant to push these auction room staples beyond already significant, top-estimated prices unless the work in question is of particularly high quality. Instead, focus has consequently shifted towards artists and works that hold a similar broad and commercial appeal, yet more accessible in price and provide scope to grow into the new record breakers of the market. The record prices obtained for exceptional works married to the reluctance to bid high on the basis of a signature alone are indicators of a healthy, stable market.
N.B: All results listed include buyer’s premium.
*F. Nayeri, The New York Times, ‘NFTs, on the Decline Elsewhere, Are Embraced by Some Museums’, 30 Nov 2022
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In October, Portland Gallery took part in the British Art Fair held at the Saatchi Gallery. Returning for the first time since the pandemic, the fair allowed Portland to reconnect with our clients in person and discuss our exciting forthcoming exhibition schedule, alongside successful sales of William Turnbull’s 1985 bronze sculpture, Paddle Venus Five and J.D. Fergusson’s elegant pencil drawing of Janice from 1918.
Portland Gallery’s most recent Modern British exhibition, Mary Fedden: The Painter’s Eye presented works from throughout the artist’s prolific career and has proved incredibly popular, with many works selling prior to opening night. Portland Gallery’s continued engagement with Scottish art yielded notable sales of works by FCB Cadell and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, with presentations of work by Edward Seago also proving popular. We have also advised and brokered the acquisitions of a number major artworks privately, including significant oils by Ben Nicholson and Alfred Wallis, a small collection of works on paper by William Scott and a major bronze by Elizabeth Frink. New acquisitions by Mary Fedden plus other Modern British artists are available to view online (www.portlandgallery.com) Please contact jamie@portlandgallery.com or esme@portlandgallery.com for further information or direct enquiries.
