Modern British Art Market: Spring 2024

A notable start to spring began in Penzance at Lay’s Auctioneers, who held the single owner sale of Pep and John Branfield’s significant Cornish art collection including paintings, books and studio ceramics. Positioning this sale in February allowed for full focus from buyers before the later London auctions. As a result, the sale was highly anticipated and performed very well with 100% of the lots on offer selling. Alfred Wallis, an enduringly popular St Ives artist, was one of the top performers with his painting Steamer with Fish realising £60,000 hammer against an estimate of £12,000-18,000. Three paintings by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham were also on offer and exceeded their auction valuations. Composition February 1954, a small-scale abstract on board (with a similar work held in the Tate collection) sold just under 5 times its low estimate at £24,000 hammer, and Gurnards Head No. 2, an earlier 1947 work on paper by the artist hammered strongly for the same price. As part of our advisory service, Portland Gallery successfully acquired a John Wells painting on behalf of a client.

In March, sales followed in Newbury with Dreweatts holding their Modern and Contemporary Art auction. There were strong results for Roger Fry as two oils, Wooded Landscape with Hills Beyond (£700-1,000) and Still Life of a Jar, Apples and a Candlestick Holder (£1,000-1,500) both sold for a hammer price of £7,000. Following last year’s results, the interest in Bloomsbury continues to grow and the dedicated auction of Bloomsbury art at Bonhams’ this April shall be an interesting test for this area of the market. It was, however, Keith Vaughan and Sir John Lavery that were top performers. Lavery’s 25 x 38 cm Original Sketch for ‘The Hearing of the Appeal of Sir Roger Casement’ sold for £124,000 hammer far above its £15,000-25,000 auction estimate; though this high result is likely down to historical importance of the subject, rather than a renewed popularity for the artist. Vaughan’s Blue Landscape with Figure sold at a healthy hammer price of £35,000 (estimate £18,000-25,000). The artist’s figurative oils are continuing to achieve strong results, with success echoed at Christie’s later in the month where the undoubtedly looser Landscape with Figure, painted in 1975, just two years before Vaughan’s death, made £42,000 hammer (estimate £15,000-25,000).

An energetic level of bidding across several lots at Christie’s provided a largely positive outlook. The evening’s result totalled £23,781,300 representing a 23% year on year increase in sales according to the house. Meanwhile the day sale, making £5,133,870 had 87% of its 154 lots sold by value. Both sales included a selection owned by brewery businessman Sir Keith and Lady Showering, including L.S. Lowry’s 1957 Sunday Afternoon, which was the highest estimated lot at £4-6 million. The statement oil sold for £6.29 million, now the second highest price for a work by the artist at auction behind Going to the Match, also sold by Christie’s in 2022. Nine other Lowry’s were on offer across the evening and day sales though these failed to appeal to the same degree; four went unsold and another was withdrawn. The Lowry market, particularly for smaller oils, appears a little over saturated after being heavily promoted by the auction houses in recent years, but results suggest that works of both quality and rarity can still command significant sums.

The evening sale saw two new world records for paintings: one for Pauline Boty’s Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give, 1962 at £1.3 million and the other for R.B. Kitaj’s Clerk’s Dream, 1972 at £529,200. The latter came as a surprise, breaking the auction record previously set 16 years ago by a pastel on paper sold from the artist’s estate. Clerk’s Dream is arguably one of Kitaj’s most important paintings to have appeared at auction in recent years, though a major retrospective exhibition of his works at a London gallery at the end of 2023 through to January 2024 may have also sparked new interest in the School of London artist. Sculpture by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth drew additional impressive results. Moore’s alabaster Head, c.1930, made nearly six times the high estimate (£5.1 million) and set a new record for unique sculpture by the artist. Records for unique sculpture continued into the day sale, as Ronald Moody’s carved Crouched Male Figure c.1952 achieved an anticipated high value of £40,320 against a £7,000-10,000 estimate. The Hepworth Wakefield is due to hold the first significant exhibition of the Jamaican-born artist in June, alongside the publication of a new biography.

Several other lots in the day sale performed over estimate. Small Landscape No. 7 (£5,000-8,000) by Peter Lanyon, one of three works on paper offered, curiously flew well above the expected price eventually selling for £47,880, while Craigie Aitchison’s small oil Tree Star and Moon (£4,000-6,000) reached an exceptional £32,760. Following the half a million dollar sale of MoMA’s large-scale Bryan Wynter at Sotheby’s New York, Christies’ Flowering Monolith, 1957, previously in the collection of Airfix’s Chairman Ralph Ehrman, was lined up perfectly to take a top result (£207,900). It is interesting to note that just a few months prior at Lay’s, a Wynter in the Branfield collection at exactly the same size made under estimate at just £14,500 hammer, showing that together with the quality of the painting, timing sales in line with others in larger, global platforms can indeed sway buyer demand.

Women artists continued to stand out as sculpture and ceramics by Barbara Hepworth, Emily Young and Lucy Rie also exceeded estimates. Cabbages, 1912 by Dora Carrington made over six times its low estimate and a new record for the artist for a work on paper (£20,160). The first exhibition of Carrington’s works in thirty years will be held at Pallant House this autumn, which again could be seen as stimulus for competitive bidding. Certainly, since Gwen John’s show last year, popularity has increased as again evidenced by two works on paper selling over three times low estimates in the day sale and an oil portrait of Dorelia (£113,400) included in the evening sale.

Naturally, despite the depth of bidding throughout the auction, some lots did not achieve a sale. Works by Lynn Chadwick and Terry Frost went unsold with estimates perhaps too strong compared to other examples by the artists, demonstrating that values do still need to be realistic to garner results. While Cadell’s Iona, North Shore also failed to find a new owner at Christie’s, Glasgow’s Great Western Auctions saw one of Scotland’s highest results for the artist as Dahlias, with its striking Colourist palette and strong private provenance, made £220,000 hammer (estimate £100,000-200,000). In many instances where top prices were achieved, wider contextual presentations (both past and upcoming), as well as newsworthy sales by prominent owners have influenced buyers, and these trends continue to build the market for 20th Century artists.

British artworks continue to be of value in wider sales. Strong results have already been seen this year in Post War and Contemporary auctions including Frank Auerbach’s Head of EOW II, 1964 (£4 million), Bridget Riley’s Break, 1987 (£1.1 million) and several Winston Branch paintings. Branch, who studied under Auerbach at the Slade during the 1970s has been on an upward trajectory in recent years. After a world record auction price of £239,400 was set at Christie’s last year, three further works appeared in the houses’ prestigious evening sales this spring. Dancing into the Silent Blue, 1982-83 took a new joint place of the second highest price at auction at Christie’s (£126,000) and at Sotheby’s Walking Down the River, 1994 sold at the third highest (£95,250). This work had previously featured in a select private selling exhibition of the artist’s works held over November and December 2023.

January saw Portland Gallery take part in the London Art Fair, presenting a selection of 20th Century and contemporary women artists under the theme ‘gesture and colour’. Significant sales of artist such as Roger Hilton and Ithell Colquhoun were reported by dealers and Portland Gallery saw sales of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Mary Fedden, Gillian Ayres, Barbara Rae as well as a privately brokered sale of a John Cecil Stevenson oil. Back at the gallery, we look forward to welcoming our clients into a busy cycle of our exhibitions in 2024, including a major Edward Seago exhibition in June, a joint contemporary/20th Century exhibition of sculpture in July and a Mary Fedden exhibition in November. The recent results indicate an optimistic outlook for the future as we head towards the summer auction schedule and British Art Fair in the autumn.

Contact Jamie Anderson (jamie@portlandgallery.com) or Esme Dollow (esme@portlandgallery.com) if you would like to discuss our 20th Century art programme, or how we can assist with our advisory services.