Modern British Art

Six works hooked off wall and reeled in through barred window

Scottish auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull started off their year on January 10 with the sale of the Deloitte Art Collection at The Royal Academy in London.

THE 102-year-old Welsh artist Stanley Lewis (b.1905) is trying to locate the current whereabouts of his painting of The Crosyceilliog Blacksmiths.

Gagosian’s bid gives Sotheby’s new heart

FOUR men have been bailed until Ferbruary 25 next year following the police investigation into the theft of five L.S. Lowry paintings.

Following the announcement in August of a newly-discovered 1938 fairground scene by Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976) scheduled to appear at Sotheby’s on December 13, it has emerged that the scene depicted is not, in fact, Beswick Fair, near Manchester, as had been mooted.

In 1914, Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) was living in Cornwall and enjoying the most fertile period of her career.

Just a month after their most successful sale ever, thanks to the consignment of an archive of Francis Bacon’s work, Woking auctioneers Ewbank’s have won another Bacon collection.

For the second time in the space of a week a UK provincial auctioneer was celebrating a million-pound sale of works by one of the world’s most famous artists.

Works by Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) are only very occasionally seen on the market. So when this evocative watercolour Salt Marsh was offered at Sworders (15% buyer’s premium) sale in Stansted Mountfitchet on April 11 it attracted at least seven interested parties.

On a cold January 26 night in Edinburgh, a packed saleroom at Lyon & Turnbull witnessed a defining moment in the Scottish art market.

THE market for the paintings of Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) continues to be on a roll, particularly up in Cumbria, where the former wife of Ben Nicholson lived in the town of Brampton, some 10 miles east of Carlisle, during the latter stages of her career after her return from Paris in 1938.

PICK up the Modern British reference books and you might just find a small mention of Edgar Hubert: born in Billingshurst, West Sussex in 1906; trained at the Slade; an exhibitor with the London Group from 1931 to 1947; died in obscurity (actually it was in Scafold, West Sussex) in 1985.

The Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum have added two paintings by Joseph Southall (1861-1944) to their internationally recognised collection of British Arts & Crafts.

The rise and rise of Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) out of the shadow of her husband, Ben, can be compared to that of Gwen John, now recognised as at very least equal to the artistic talent of her brother Augustus.

JACK Vettriano (b.1951) is not an artist normally associated with the North East of England, but one of the lesser known facts about Britain’s Most Popular Artist is that one of his first one-man exhibitions, if not the first, was held at the Corrymella Scott Gallery in Jesmond, an upmarket suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1992.

WHAT should the art world do when the going gets tough? Many in the trade sit back and whine. Others go into battle. Those who do get up from their derrières and practise a little innovation and lots of enthusiasm often do well in the most difficult of periods.

REGULAR readers of Scott Reyburn’s Art Market will be only too aware that many equestrian paintings by Sir Alfred James Munnings (1878-1959) have in recent years shown significant increases in value. As he reported as recently as Antiques Trade Gazette No 1648, July 17, Munnings’ oil sketch Newmarket Cheveley was the only work to dramatically exceed its estimate in Sotheby’s Important British Picture sale on July 1.

OMENS could not be better for the 20/21 British Art Fair, which, from September 15 to 19, returns to its roots at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 after a couple of years down the road at The Commonwealth Institute.

THE Fergusson show at Alexander Meddowes, coincides with Edinburgh’s exhilarating annual Festival, which brings with it not only hundreds of incredibly diverse theatrical shows but a good sprinkling of art exhibitions too.