BLAST #15 | A Spring review
May 2024
Colin Gleadell reports on his seasonal highlights in the Modern British art market away from London’s West End.
New record for ‘underrated’ Alfred Wolmark
Alfred Wolmark (1877-1961), Gaudier Brezska at Work, Oil on Canvas. Signed with monogram and dated 1912 (lower right), 119 x 84cm (46¾ x 33 in.). Image courtesy of Dreweatts
Sold for a record £175,200
Starting with Dreweatts in Newbury on 13 March, a graphic and colourful 1912 portrait of the artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (the subject of the book Savage Messiah) was made by the underrated Alfred Wolmark (1877 - 1961) three years before the sitter’s death in the trenches. Rising from a £4,000 estimate it fetched a staggering £175,200 record, from dealer Phillip Mould, according to informed sources. The artist’s previous record was £67,250. Not only is the work of art historical importance, but, showing Gaudier at work on a sculpture of Wolmark, it has popular appeal telling a story of artistic friendship and tragic loss.
Christopher Bangs’ estate sale
On 9 April, Sworders in Essex was entrusted with the sale of art from the collection of antiques dealer Christopher Bangs’ estate in which there was a quantity of works by Prunella Clough (1919- 1999), who was a close friend. However, while attracting considerable critical praise, Clough’s unaffected, non-decorative approach to portraying unremarkable subject matter tends to escape the market, and nothing sold for more than £7,000 - providing good opportunities for serious collectors.
The sale also reminded us how much ground the YBA’s had lost when two defaced 18th century portraits, ‘One day you will no longer be loved’ by bad boys Jake and Dinos Chapman from their 2012 ‘Family Portrait’ series could not find buyers in the £6,000 to £8,000 range. Back in 2008 another example from the series sold for £50,000, but they’ve been going downhill ever since.
Prunella Clough (1919-199), Dancer, 1950, Collage oil and balsa wood on softboard. Sold by Sworders for £4,800
Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), Untitled Mural, 1947. Wall painting 76 x 60cm, framed 99 x 87cm, depth 25cm. Image courtesy Lay’s Auctioneers
An unsolved mystery in Cornwall
Meanwhile, a mystery was unfolding in Cornwall as Penzance’s Lay’s Auctioneers offered a rediscovered mural fully catalogued as the work of Ben Nicholson on 11 April with an estimate of £40,000 to £80,000. The painting first came to light when it was presented on Phillip Mould’s Fake or Fortune? programme in August 2022. In it, Mould said that if the mural was entirely by Nicholson it could be worth £200,000. However, Ben Nicholson experts Lee Beard and Chris Stevens together with the author of a forthcoming catalogue raisonné, Rachel Smith, had their doubts about ‘hesitant drawing’ and musical notation ‘too obvious for Nicholson’, and reckoned it was “probably” a collaborative piece by Nicholson with his friend Frederick Staite Murray in whose house the mural was made when Nicholson was thought to be staying there. So Mould adjusted his valuation down to £50,000/£100,000. Within a few months the painting appeared in Bonhams’ preview magazine described as a joint work, but with no estimate. Something must have then gone awry, though, as it was never actually catalogued or offered at auction by Bonhams. Instead, after a five month gap it was offered, not at Sotheby’s or Christie’s, but in Cornwall fully catalogued (i.e., as a work by Nicholson alone) but with a £40,000 to £80,000 estimate, as if it were a joint work. But at the very last hour it was withdrawn ‘pending further investigation.’ A statement was posted by Lay’s on its website stating that: ‘We have been notified by the Ben Nicholson Catalogue Raisonné committee that in their opinion, the mural is
"not a work by Ben Nicholson in whole, or in part"
But who is on this committee? What is their authority? Is it the triumvirate of experts Mould called in to inspect the painting? Beard and Stephens both confirmed to BLAST it is not them. When asked, several dealers in Nicholson’s work and academics knew Smith was writing a catalogue raisonnee but had no idea about the existence of a ‘committee’ - its constitution, powers or purpose. When BLAST finally tracked down a spokesperson for the committee through Lay’s, they wrote that it is not Smith either, but that “The members of the Ben Nicholson Catalogue Raisonné Committee and any external advice it receives, along with all its discussions, are held confidentially.” In other words, they wish to be anonymous. Stay tuned...
Mod Brit growth continues
L.S Lowry (1887-1976), Study of People and Animals, 1971, Sold by Canterbury Auction Galleries
When actor Peter Barkworth died in 2006, he left the best works in his art collection - including modern British works by Walter Sickert, Philip Wilson Steer, Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, Duncan Grant, and Robert Bevan - to the National Trust’s Fenton House in Hampstead, near to Flask Walk where Barkworth lived for most of his adult life. His attachment to the location is reflected in the record £18,000 he paid in 1980 at Sotheby’s for Flask Walk, Hampstead at Night by Charles Ginner, 1933, which is now at Fenton House. The rest of his collection was left to his partner, David Wyn Jones, who moved to Folkestone and died last year, and was sold at Canterbury Auction Galleries on 12 April. Top price was £72,000 (+30% buyer’s premium as with all lots in this sale) for a 1969 horizontal landscape, Sussex River, Evening Sky by Ivon Hitchens. Dealers he bought from often became exhibitors at the 20th century British Art Fair, (now simply the British Art Fair to accommodate the contemporary) - Duncan Miller, Roland, Browse and Delbanco (later Browse and Darby), Redfern, Austin Desmond and the Fine Art Society. Occasionally Barkworth noted prices he paid. One of his earliest was a cartoon by Pont which he bought from Abbot and Holder in the 1950s for ‘a few pence’. It sold for £520. Also bought in the fifties was a painting of Putney by Carel Weight which had cost £40. It now sold for £5,100. He doesn’t say when he bought a small abstract canvas dated 1960 by William Scott, but that he paid Sotheby’s a bargain £10 for it, so that must have been about late 60s when there was no resale market. Canterbury Auctions sold it for £9,200. In 1978 he paid £1,000 at Sotheby’s for a pen and ink Study of People and Animals, 1971, by L.S. Lowry which was hammered down in Canterbury for £34,000 to Richard Green - all testaments to the gradual growth of the Modern British market even at the humbler levels over the last 70 years.
‘Outsider’ interests
James Dixon (1887-1970), Cutty Sark,
Oil on paper laid on board, 54.5 x 76cm (21½ x 30")
Signed and inscribed 'Cutty Sark, the famous British Windjammer'
In reaction perhaps to the strong prices commanded recently at auction and by galleries at art fairs by the Cornish fisherman, Alfred Wallis, Dublin auctioneers, Adams, experienced an uptick in prices for the Irish fisherman and naïve painter, James Dixon, on 16 April. Dixon’s work was often shown alongside that of Wallis, almost seventy years his senior, particularly at Crane Arts, the Chelsea offshoot of Crane Kalman in the 1960s and 1970s though hard to sell, even in the hundreds. But in the last decade (Dixon died in 2006) with the interest in self-taught ’outsiders’ gaining ground, he has fetched four figures, and then in April, five, when his painting of the Cutty Sark, the famous British Windjammer sold for Euros 35,000.
Henry Orlik: The ‘as yet unrecognised’ of Modern British art
Henry Orlik (b. 1947), Don’t Vote, 1970s, Acrylic on Canvas. Image courtesy Winsor Birch
Modern British art was once again well represented at Battersea’s The Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair in early May, notably by former Sotheby’s Director Grant Ford, and his recently formed gallery, Winsor Birch based in Marlborough. His stand included several works by the little-known Henry Orlik. Born in Germany in 1947 but of Polish descent, Orlik came to England with his family soon after to live under the terms of the Polish Resettlement Act and found his way to art schools in the west country. Associated with the surrealist movement, he never formed any lasting dealer relationships so retained a quantity of his work. Tragically, some 200 examples were stolen from his London studio whilst he was in hospital recently, but Ford, who now represents him, has access to the rest. Three works, including the aptly entitled acrylic ‘Don’t Vote’ (c.1970s, pictured and priced at £12,500) were sold in the opening 48 hours in the £4,000 to £15,000 range which must place Orlik in the ‘as yet unrecognised’ category in Modern British art.