BLAST #23
London Art Fair
John Byrne, Boy with Moth, 1994, Lithograph, 75.5 x 106 cm, edition of 30. Published by Glasgow Print Studio.
Outstanding examples of Modern British art flying off the walls at this year’s London Art Fair (January 22-26) were few and far between. Occupying pole position just by the entrance for the first time, Christopher Kingzett found buyers for works on paper by Graham Sutherland (£18,000), Patrick Heron (£24,000) and Henry Moore (£65,000) as well as paintings by Gillian Ayres (see below). But more expensive works proved difficult. Attempting a repeat of last year (see BLAST #13), Glasgow’s Gerber Fine Art showed a 1992 ink and wash self-portrait drawing by Jenny Saville from her final year at art school before her discovery by Charles Saatchi launched her onto a meteoric career rise with eventual representation by Gagosian and a record £9 million for a work by a living female artist at auction. But whereas last year the exhibit sold quickly, this year’s example, priced similarly at £210,000, appeared not to have sold.
The most red dots on day one were accumulated by Glasgow Print Studio which was busy applying stickers to prints by Gregory Morse (5 by drinks time), Lin Chau (born in Hong Kong but lives and works in Scotland – 7); Nicolas Party (3); and the late great John Byrne (4). Prices generally in the lower thousands.
Focus on Gillian Ayres (1930 – 2018)
Gillian Ayres C.B.E, R.A, Composition, Black and White, Collage, oil and ripolin on board, 43.3 × 46.7 cm, signed, titled and dated (verso). Courtesy of Christopher Kingzett.
Gillian Ayres, What That Aprille, 1984, Oil on canvas, 286 x 286 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Narborough.
One of the first sales at this year’s fair was a large 10-foot square turbulent abstraction by Gillian Ayres, What That Aprille, 1984, on Robert Sandelson’s Narborough stand. Sandelson could not be drawn on the exact price but did allow that it was in excess of £50,000. For those with longer memories, Sandelson’s painting had been offered twice by Christie’s in King Street in the 1990s with estimates between £6,000 and £15,000 but had failed to sell. It was then shipped down to Christie’s South Kensington branch in 1999 with an estimate of £2,000 and snapped up by Sandelson for £2,185.
With no major effort in reviving the artist’s reputation afoot that he knew of, it was just a sense that “it was about time” that prompted Sandelson to pull this one out of storage. ”She’s a gigantic artist with an unjustly low reputation at present,” he said. He may also have been referring to the time lapse since the Marlborough Gallery, which represented the Ayres estate after she died, closed down last year. At her last exhibition staged by Marlborough in 2021, a market revival was anticipated with prices ranging from £70,000-150,000 for paintings and from £9,000-18,000 for works on paper. Although her top sale price privately is said to be as much as £365,000, no public sale information reflects that. Top price at auction is still £75,000 set in 2018 at Sotheby’s for a 1960s painting, NIMBUS.
At the London Art Fair, Sandelson also had another Ayres, a much smaller tachiste work from the 1950s, which he sold for less than £50,000. As it happened, a few other exhibitors had a similar notion about Ayres making her unexpectedly one of the most visible artists at the fair. Two smaller paintings by Ayres, dating from the 1950s and displaying the influence of Roger Hilton, were exhibited and sold by Christopher Kingzett for £35,000+ARR each and Long & Ryle had a medium size 1958 collage and mixed media work which sold with an asking price of £15,000.
Beyond the fair, Freya Mitton had a colourful 33-inch square untitled Ayres abstract from 1987 priced at £22,000+ARR which she sold at the LAPADA Fair last October. The New Art Centre, which exhibited her work in its Sloane Street gallery during her lifetime, continues to promote her in its Salisbury location, and currently a sizeable example from her estate is included in an extensive floral art exhibition, Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture at the Saatchi Gallery. Next month, contemporary Camberwell gallery, Sim Smith will include several works by Ayres to reflect her position as a pioneer female abstract expressionist for the younger generation.
But perhaps the biggest spur to the Ayres market has been the large exhibition arranged by art advisor, Graham Southern, mounted in Hong Kong by Tang Contemporary Art in January, and curated by the artist’s son, Sam Mundy. Prices here were similar to those asked by Marlborough, says Mundy, though sales information has not yet filtered through. Coming up will be an exhibition in June at the Heong Gallery at Downing College Cambridge to be curated by the writer, Martin Gayford.
Mod Brit heads to Maastricht
TEFAF Maastricht (March 15 – 20) has long been established as the premier Old Master fair in the world. But this century, the balance of exhibitors has slowly been shifting towards the modern and contemporary. With barely a handful of specialist dealers, though, there is never much in the way of Modern British. However, this year there is an addition to that small core of specialists in the form of Notting Hill gallery, Piano Nobile. So what will they take to excite the sophisticated collectors that frequent the fair?
They were going to take a Barbara Hepworth polished brass Trophy (Flight), 1965, edition number 2 out of 2. The sculpture was last sold in May 2022 at the Sir Nicholas Goodison sale (see BLAST #1) for £176,400, and was going to be priced at TEFAF at £325,000. But the sculpture has just been sold to an American collector for an undisclosed price so won’t be travelling to Europe after all.
Eric Gill, Boxers, 1913, Portland Stone. Courtesy of Piano Nobile.
Another Piano Nobile exhibit is hanging in the balance, waiting for an export license. Eric Gill’s Portland stone carving, Boxers, 1913, is indeed museum worthy, if that is the cause of the delay, but who will buy it? In November 2018 Christie’s valued it at £400,00- £600,00 but withdrew it from sale for lack of pre-sale interest at that price. Piano Nobile, which was advising on the sale, then took it in house, cleaned it up and is now asking £480,000 for it. Interestingly, Boxers was the last Eric Gill work to be offered for sale by Christie’s before the latest flare up of the old controversy concerning Gill’s private moral conduct persuaded them to cancel Gill from their sales. Piano Nobile consulted a lawyer about the situation and were advised that, because the artist was no longer alive, his work should stand on its own merits. So, this work could be a discussion point amongst the visiting collectors and museum curators in Maastricht, if it gets there.
Barry Humphries
Christie’s disposal of the Barry Humphries collection brought a little Fin de siècle magic to King Street this month with a £4.6 million sale which almost doubled the estimate. Who would have known that the man behind the ever-flippant tongue-in-cheek Dame Edna Everage would have had such a deep-seated passion and interest in the art and literature of the decadent 1890s. Or, that the market would respond so favourably to what may seem a bit of a backwater of art history, drowned by the global enthusiasm for the post-war and contemporary. But for nine hours the ethos of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and Charles Conder held sway, bolstered by dozens of lesser-known symbolists for the real cognoscenti.
Sir Max Beerbohm, A Recollection: Conder, Max, Rothenstein and Wilde at the Café Royal, 1929. Courtesy of Christie’s.
British art was led by the English born Australian émigré Charles Conder by whom there were 27 works contributing some £700,000 to the total, a rare self-portrait by Beardsley and over a dozen drawings by the dandy cartoonist Sir Max Beerbohm. In September 1992, Humphries bid well over estimate to buy a drawing by Beerbohm of Conder, William Rothenstein and Wilde with the artist drinking at the Café Royale in 1929 from the collection of the famous cricket commentator John Arlott for £6,820. His enthusiasm was still shared this month as it surpassed an estimate of £8,000 to sell for £37,800 – a record for an ink drawing without colour by Beerbohm, of which there are many.
The tiny sprinkling of Modern British art which came to him largely by way of his father-in-law, Sir Stephen Spender, was led by a Duncan Grant of a Venetian Gondola, that tripled estimates to sell for £20,160, and a 1919 war related drawing of Sappers at Work by David Bomberg which also tripled estimates at £21,420.
The most contested British work in Humphrey’s collection was a red chalk drawing of a young woman in profile by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, whose inclusion in the collection lends weight to his categorisation as a symbolist as much as a Pre-Raphaelite. Estimated at £30,000 it sold after a long bidding battle for £195,300.