BLAST # 17 | Modern British on Target at Bonhams

A Modern British and Irish Art sale at Bonhams on June 19  provided a positive backdrop to the market as it wound down for the summer before reopening with the British Art Fair in September. The sale saw more works hit their target estimates than at Sotheby’s a fortnight earlier (see BLAST #16) as the house accumulated £4 million including buyer’s premium against a pre-sale estimate of £3 million - £4.7 million. Although 29% of the 100 lots went unsold, the majority of the other 71% sold within or above estimate making the market feel much more positive, because, as dealers suggested, the estimates and therefore the reserves were more realistic. 

John Piper C.H. (1903-1992), (Forms on Dark Blue), 1936, oil on canvas. Sold for £317,900

William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012), Female, conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993, bronze with a black patina. Sold for £152,800

Among the exceptions was a large abstract by John Piper (Forms on Dark Blue, 1936, ). Once thought to have been destroyed in the Blitz, it was discovered to have been in a house in Cape Cod owned by Piper’s friend, the Russian modernist architect and designer, Serge Chermayeff (1900 - 1996) whose descendants were now selling. Of only 35 paintings from his sought-after series of abstracts which place him briefly in the forefront of international modernism, other examples have claimed all the top prices for Piper at auction. One much smaller example which sold for £482,500 in 2013 is still a record for Piper. Another smaller example, Forms on a White Ground, 1935, had sold to Richard Green in 2020 for £371,250. However, perhaps because the Bonhams example was much darker and had once been damaged and restored by the artist, so not in perfect original condition, this example was claimed by an online bidder below estimate for £317,500.

Another top lot to underperform was William Turnbull’s 6 foot plus bronze Female (1989/93), that sold below estimate for £152,800. Another example from the same edition of six had sold for a double estimate £490,000 in 2007 when Turnbull prices were on the rise and it was supported by bidding from dealers Offer Waterman and Pyms Gallery. But most of the other top lots exceeded their estimates.

A previously unrecorded watercolour of a Boy and animals in a landscape by Lucian Freud when he was 20 years old was unsigned but fully catalogued and dated to c 1942 with the help of Catherine Lampert and Toby Treves, who are compiling a catalogue raisonne on the artist. Estimated at £70,000 it made one of the highest prices for a Freud work on paper of that early date, when it sold to a phone bidder for £279,800.

Lucian Freud (1922-2011), Boy and animals in a Landscape, circa 1942, watercolour, gouache, pen and ink on paper laid on board. Sold for £279,800

Long overshadowed by Freud, his former friend, John Craxton, has been coming into his own of late with several of his Grecian subjects hitting six figures. To that list, at number 8, can now be added his muscular Goatherd and Goat, 1950, which sold at Bonhams to a phone bidder for a double estimate £203,600.

John Craxton R.A. (1922-2009), Goatherd and Goat, 1950, oil on canvas. Sold for £203,600

Inevitably L.S. Lowry was among the top sellers. An early painting dated 1922 of Sailing Boats, excited some competition in which art advisor, Sarah Pearce was outgunned by an online bidder at a double estimate £229,000, while the artist’s view of Old Buildings Edinburgh, 1937, bought at Bonhams in 1999 for £41,000 reaped a goodly return for the vendor at £190,000. Going for charm, the Richard Green gallery picked up a small group of Children Walking, 1951, on the low estimate for £89,300.

Other artists to reap passable returns were Keith Vaughan, whose rare early Portrait of a Boy, 1937- 42, had been won at £3,200 in 1998 and now sold for an above estimate £14,080; and Craigie Aitchison, whose large richly coloured Crucifixion, 1983-84, last sold in 1998 for £20,700 now sold  for £63,900.  

The sale had a strong selection of five works by Patrick Heron, embracing his various style changes between the 1940s and 1960s, most of which had come from the collection of his friends, Sabih Aykoler and Fello Atkinson.

Laurence Stephen Lowry R.A. (1887-1976), Sailing boats, 1922, oil on canvas. Sold for £229,00

The highest estimate was on a 1950 Braque inspired landscape, The Langdale Pikes, which had an estimate of £200,000 but was adjudged unsold when the bidding stopped at £130,000. It was however sold privately soon after, though no price is available. A slightly earlier view of Mousehole Harbour, 1947, sold to Mark Goodman just below estimate for £35,840. Goodman then went on to buy one of the later abstract gouaches, GREEN FLASH: SEPTEMBER 1967, near the low estimate for £23,040. But another gouache, 5 DISCS IN RED, 1964  attracted most bidding doubling the top estimate to sell for £152,800 . Interestingly, the same telephone bidder placed winning bids on three figurative still lives by Eliot Hodgkin from £7,000 to £20,000  that had been owned by the late conductor, Sir Malcolm Sargent, including two of red and white carnations such as those he used to wear in his buttonhole.

Patrick Heron (1920-1999), 5 Discs in Red, March 1964, 1964, oil on canvas. Sold for £152,800

Other buyers and underbidders:

54. Algernon Cecil Newton. London Reflections 1942

(Estimate:  £30,000/50,000)  sold for £127,400, the third highest price for the artist, to Daniel Katz against underbidding from Patrick Bourne.  Another Katz favourite is Edward Burra whose 1931 watercolour of Dr Fu Manchu was one of the most sought lots selling for a triple estimate £82,900 though Katz was not in the running on this occasion.

73. Alfred Wallis. Two Boats, (Estimate: £20,000/£30,000). Sold for £29,440 to Alan Wheatley.

78. Bryan Wynter. Watercourse, 1959. (Estimate: £10,000/£25,000). Underbid by Portland Gallery, it sold for £44,800 to a private collector.

Tristram Hillier R.A. (1905-1983), Fin de Saison, 1939, oil on canvas. Sold for £165,500

To end on a high note, the only record at the sale was for Tristram Hillier’s eerie beach scene in France, Fin de Saison, painted full of foreboding in 1939 at the onset of the German invasion of France. Prices for the British surrealist had been subdued until lately and this work saw the current wave of enthusiasm continue as it sold above estimate for a record £165,500.