§ Mary Fedden O.B.E., R.A., R.W.A. (British 1915-2012) Harbour Cat, 2005 (For RCA Secret) watercolour on paper, laid on postcard Dimensions:10cm x 15cm (4in x 6in) Provenance:Provenance Donated by the Artist to RCA Secret, Royal College of Art, London, where acquired by the current owner. Note: The Royal College of Art’s fundraising exhibition RCA Secret was established in 1994 and was London’s original postcard exhibition.All proceeds from the annual event go to the RCA Fund, which in turn enables the College to offer bursaries to those students who would otherwise not be able to attend its storied classrooms, allowing talented individuals, regardless of their background or financial circumstances, to access a unique educational experience at a formative time in their lives.Past contributors to the exhibition include renowned alumni and friends of the College such as Christopher Bailey, David Bowie, Sir James Dyson, Tracey Emin, Norman Foster, Thomas Heatherwick, Anish Kapoor, Mike Leigh, Stella McCartney, Steve McQueen, Yoko Ono, Zandra Rhodes and Sir Paul Smith. Current students and recent alumni are also invited to contribute – adding to the fascinating mix of styles and responses.However, when the works go on display, all are anonymous – leaving it up to the viewer to decide if the work they like is by an art-world luminary or a rising star. Some are quite obvious (a few artists miss the memo and sign their works on the front); the majority are not. Part of this is due to there being no limitation on medium: from photography and collage, to drawing, painting and even sculpture and embroidery, the only requirement is that all artworks should be postcard-sized.To buy the works, members of the public register to gain a buyer’s ID – after which, it’s first come, first served (capped at four works per buyer until the very last days of the show). This wonderful collection [lots 292-300] was put together by possibly the most dedicated follower of RCA Secret, who was first in line every year between 2002 and 2018 and as such it represents the best of what the exhibition is about. There are works by major names such as Grayson Perry, Yinka Shonibare, Mimmo Paladino, Maggi Hambling, David Bailey and Richard Wentworth, mixed in with jewels by artists less well known, all with something in common, that particular collaborative and open-hearted spirit of the exhibition.
We found 640875 price guide item(s) matching your search
There are 640875 lots that match your search criteria. Subscribe now to get instant access to the full price guide service.
Click here to subscribe- List
- Grid
-
640875 item(s)/page
§ Geoffrey Clarke R.A. (British 1924-2014) Torii Prone One (i), 1965 (LeGrove S276) stamped artist's mark, numbered 1/10 and 512 and dated 65, aluminium Dimensions:10cm high, 19.5cm wide (4in high, 7 5/8in wide) Provenance:ProvenancePurchased from Whitford Fine Art, London in 2002 by the current owner.LiteratureLeGrove, Judith, Geoffrey Clarke Sculptor: Catalogue Raisonné, London: Pangolin and Lund Humphries, 2017, p.106, S276, illustrated. Note: Geoffrey Clarke: Intimate yet MonumentalThe works by Geoffrey Clarke offered here date from 1951 to 1993, spanning over forty years of his long and prolific career and representing a range of phases within his practice. What they have in common, however, is an intimate yet monumental character in which sculptures as modestly-sized as 10 centimetres high encapsulate a power and presence more readily associated with larger works.Head I of 1951 comes from an early series and was made whilst Clarke was studying at the Royal College of Art in London. Worked in iron, it reveals an exploration of Cubism and Surrealism with a frank appreciation of the materiality of his medium. Clarke graduated the following year, with his talent being immediately recognised with nothing less than his inclusion in the New Aspects of British Sculpture exhibition in the British Pavilion of the 26th Venice Biennale that summer. Clarke’s work was shown alongside that of seven other sculptors, namely Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Bernard Medows, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull. He was therefore positioned within the vanguard of post-war British sculpture and his career was launched to spectacular effect.Maquette for Sainsbury Sculpture Competition of 1965 fast forwards us to the mid-1960s, Clarke’s interest in public commissions and the associated use of cast aluminium; Ann Elliott has described the sandbox he built for this purpose in his studio foundry in Suffolk in 1954 (see Ann Elliott, ‘Clarke, Geoffrey Cyril Petts’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, on-line entry accessed 19/9/23). A totemic central element is crowned with a spiralling form whose upwards thrust is akin to organic growth. The varied surface treatment of the two parts is key to expressing the contrast between their presentations of mass and movement.Torrii Prone (i) and Toriio also date from 1965. As Peter Black has explained ‘The title ‘Torii’ applied to this series of sculptures derives from the ceremonial gateways to Japanese Shinto shrines. The essence of these works is the contrast between the inanimate slab of metal and the organic structures that bud and grow from the top.’ (Peter Black, Geoffrey Clarke: Symbols for Man, Sculptures and Graphic Work 1949-94, Lund Humphries, London, 1994, p.70). This series encompassed works based on vertical and horizontal formats in which Clarke explored a softened geometry combined with a curvaceous and rhythmic solidity. It is interesting to compare the organicism of these sculptures with Adams’s contemporary Vertical Form No. 1, an austere and imposing bronzed steel work made on a human scale and the suppleness of Bernard Meadows’ Pointing Figure of two years later.The Sea at Aldeburgh of 1978 is a particularly personal work. Clarke had close links to the Suffolk seaside town, not least owning its Martello Tower between 1967 and 1971; the tower and its surrounding topography fed into his work for some time. Made from mixed media applied to a small rectangle of polystyrene – more readily associated in Clarke’s practice with carving and the casting process – it is a simplified sea view in which the composition is split almost equally between sky and sea.Column and Pyramid both date from 1993. By this point in his career, Clarke had brought together formerly disparate elements to create sculptural planes enlivened by rich, deep-relief patterning which encases (or reveals) a raw core. Both works refer to significant architectural structures, whose power is yet retained in their modest scale.Clarke’s 70th birthday in 1994 was marked by several exhibitions, including a solo show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park which featured a cast of Head I on its catalogue cover. Ever interested in new materials, Clarke made his first work in wood in 1996 and, with an eye to his legacy, donated his archive to Leeds Museums and Galleries in 2012, two years before his death.
§ Terry Atkinson (British 1939-) The Stone Touchers 1 Art from the Bunker 4, 1985 acrylic on board Dimensions:121cm x 90cm (47 1/2in x 35 1/2in) Provenance:ProvenanceGimpel Fils, London.ExhibitedGimpel Fils, London, T. A. Art for the Bunker, April 1985;Tate Gallery, London, Turner Prize, 1985;Stampa, Basel, 10 February - 28 March 1987;Arts Council of Great Britain, Innocence and Experience: Images of Children in British Art from 1600 to the Present, touring exhibition to Manchester City Art Gallery, Hull, Nottingham and Glasgow, 1992-93;Touchstones, Rochdale, A Tall Order! Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s, 4 February - 7 May 2023. Note: In this painting based on a holiday snapshot, Atkinson's daughters pose in a First World War cemetery. This juxtaposition links the personal and subjective with wider political and historical issues. The title perhaps refers to the girls' place in a historical continuum which stretches from the death of a young soldier in 1916 to their nuclear-age future.
§ John Armstrong (British 1893-1973) Algerian Landscape I, circa 1930 initialled (upper right), oil on canvas Dimensions:42.3cm x 52cm (16 5/8in x 20 1/2in) Provenance:ProvenanceAnnette Armstrong, wife of the Artist;The Mayor Gallery, London, 1985;Private Collection, London. LiteratureAndrew Lambirth, John Armstrong: The Paintings, London: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd., 2009, pp.160-1, cat. no.99, illustrated. ExhibitedThe New Art Centre, London.
Marcel Breuer (Hungarian 1902-1981) for Isokon Set of Three Nesting Tables, designed 1936 each stamped MADE IN ESTONIA (to underside), laminated birch plywood, manufactured by Venesta, Estonia for Isokon Furniture Company Ltd., London, United Kingdom Dimensions:the largest 37cm high, 61cm wide, 45.5cm deep (14 1/2in high, 24in wide, 17 7/8in deep) Provenance:ProvenanceAcquired by Leslie Martin and Sadie Speight in the late 1930s and thence by descent to the current owner. Note: This design was created in February 1936, around the same time as Breuer was perfecting the Long Chair. The earliest models of the nesting tables were made by Venesta in Estonia, with later production moved to England. The architect Leslie Martin (1908-2000) and his wife, the designer Sadie Speight (1906-92) played leading roles in twentieth-century architecture and design and as champions of progressive art. They met at the University of Manchester’s School of Architecture in the 1920s and married in 1935.Martin is renowned as much for his ground-breaking architectural practice as for his research and contribution to education. He held many important public and academic positions, including Principal Assistant Architect for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (1939-48), Architect to the London County Council (1953-56) and Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University (1956-72). He was the architect of some remarkable post-war buildings, including the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank (1951), the Gulbenkian Foundation Centre for Modern Art in Lisbon (1979) and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow (1988).Speight was also a qualified architect and had a celebrated career as a designer. She was a founder member of the Design Research Unit of the Council of Industrial Design in 1943, established to make designer skills available to industry. Her designs for products such as kettles, electric irons, textiles and rugs are particularly revered. After her death, Martin paid testament to Speight’s skill at converting properties in which they could live and work, creating a ‘background for living’ by the selection and placement of furniture, carpets, fabrics, upholstery, ceramics, books and works of art in homes and studios which were widely admired.One of Martin and Speight’s collaborative projects, and their most obvious promotion of contemporary art, was their involvement with the seminal 1937 publication Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art. Martin was a co-editor with Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, whilst Speight acted as Secretary and Barbara Hepworth was responsible for its layout. Circle highlighted the vital British contribution to the European abstract movement and was re-printed in 1971.In 1938, Herbert Read commissioned Martin and Speight as joint authors of The Flat Book, which was published the following year. Conceived as a practical guide to contemporary furniture, fabrics and household projects, it is now considered a reference book about the 1930s Modernist aesthetic and is admired as an essential treatise on how the best of European design could be introduced into the British home. The foreword described its aim to be a ‘catalogue of well-designed furniture and equipment’ whilst attempting to ‘set out certain standards of contemporary design and…furnish at least a basis of criticism…to help the reader in selecting his flat…[and]…the problems of planning and furnishing’.Amongst the items featured in the ‘Living and Sleeping Space’ section was a ‘Nest of tables, by Marcel Breuer, birch, £3 13s 6d (Isokon Furniture Co)’ (p.116) and a ‘Plan’ chair by Serge Chermayeff, described as an ‘Easy chair, 5 gns (Plan Ltd)’ (p.134), manufactured by the cutting-edge design companies Isokon Furniture Company and Plan Ltd respectively. These items alone could be said to encapsulate Modernist living in their innovative use of laminated plywood and sleek, simplified silhouettes. Martin and Speight acquired a set of the Breuer tables (lot 122) and a pair of the Chermayeff chairs (see lot 125) in the late 1930s. They became key features of their homes thereafter, seen for example in the sitting-room and nursery respectively in a 1953 article in House and Garden about their former gardener’s cottage in Tring Park, Hertfordshire.Indeed, Martin and Speight enjoyed a longstanding friendship with Chermayeff and his wife Barbara, who on emigrating from England to the USA via Montreal in 1940, wrote to the couple: ‘We have met with great kindness and hospitality…we leave for the States on April 3 staying with Gropius…[Montreal]… is an astonishing place…the houses are incomplete and unindividual – the ‘Flat Book’ should be read.’ (Letter from Serge and Barbara Chermayeff of 28 March 1940 to Lesie Martin and Sadie Speight, Professor Sir Leslie Martin Personal Archive, National Galleries of Scotland GMA A70/4/1)In about 1960, ‘Le Corbusier’ dining chairs by Thonet were acquired for use in Martin’s studio in The Mill, the central building in a complex converted by the couple in Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire (four offered here as lot 123). Photographs of them in situ are reproduced in Martin’s 1983 publication Buildings and Ideas 1933-83 From the Studio of Leslie Martin and his Associates. In the late 1970s, Martin and Speight purchased a number of ‘Carmite’ chairs by Vico Magistretti, which formed part of the ‘background for living’ at The Barns nearby, to where they moved in 1977 (five offered here as lot 124). Originally built as the village granary in 1642, it was converted and extended for domestic and professional use.Martin and Speight chose their furniture with great care, and once acquired, it was treasured. Indeed, in 1992 Michael Parkin wrote: ‘Most of the contents of the Martins' home dated from this period, from the early Thirties, with chairs by Serge Chermayeff and Marcel Breuer, tables by Alvar Aalto, lights by Jorn Utzon and even a coffee service by Ben Nicholson.’ (Michael Parkin, Obituary of Sadie Speight, The Independent, 27 October 1992). The couple were arbiters of the very best in twentieth-century design and civilised living, in which the tables and chairs presented here played a long-term role.
Vico Magistretti (Italian 1920-2006) Set of Five 'Carimate' Chairs beech and rush seats Dimensions:75cm (29 1/2in) high, 52cm (20 1/2in) wide, 58cm (27 7/8in) deep Provenance:Provenance:Acquired by Leslie Martin and Sadie Speight in the late 1970s and thence by descent to the current owner. Note: The architect Leslie Martin (1908-2000) and his wife, the designer Sadie Speight (1906-92) played leading roles in twentieth-century architecture and design and as champions of progressive art. They met at the University of Manchester’s School of Architecture in the 1920s and married in 1935.Martin is renowned as much for his ground-breaking architectural practice as for his research and contribution to education. He held many important public and academic positions, including Principal Assistant Architect for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (1939-48), Architect to the London County Council (1953-56) and Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University (1956-72). He was the architect of some remarkable post-war buildings, including the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank (1951), the Gulbenkian Foundation Centre for Modern Art in Lisbon (1979) and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow (1988).Speight was also a qualified architect and had a celebrated career as a designer. She was a founder member of the Design Research Unit of the Council of Industrial Design in 1943, established to make designer skills available to industry. Her designs for products such as kettles, electric irons, textiles and rugs are particularly revered. After her death, Martin paid testament to Speight’s skill at converting properties in which they could live and work, creating a ‘background for living’ by the selection and placement of furniture, carpets, fabrics, upholstery, ceramics, books and works of art in homes and studios which were widely admired.One of Martin and Speight’s collaborative projects, and their most obvious promotion of contemporary art, was their involvement with the seminal 1937 publication Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art. Martin was a co-editor with Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, whilst Speight acted as Secretary and Barbara Hepworth was responsible for its layout. Circle highlighted the vital British contribution to the European abstract movement and was re-printed in 1971.In 1938, Herbert Read commissioned Martin and Speight as joint authors of The Flat Book, which was published the following year. Conceived as a practical guide to contemporary furniture, fabrics and household projects, it is now considered a reference book about the 1930s Modernist aesthetic and is admired as an essential treatise on how the best of European design could be introduced into the British home. The foreword described its aim to be a ‘catalogue of well-designed furniture and equipment’ whilst attempting to ‘set out certain standards of contemporary design and…furnish at least a basis of criticism…to help the reader in selecting his flat…[and]…the problems of planning and furnishing’.Amongst the items featured in the ‘Living and Sleeping Space’ section was a ‘Nest of tables, by Marcel Breuer, birch, £3 13s 6d (Isokon Furniture Co)’ (p.116) and a ‘Plan’ chair by Serge Chermayeff, described as an ‘Easy chair, 5 gns (Plan Ltd)’ (p.134), manufactured by the cutting-edge design companies Isokon Furniture Company and Plan Ltd respectively. These items alone could be said to encapsulate Modernist living in their innovative use of laminated plywood and sleek, simplified silhouettes. Martin and Speight acquired a set of the Breuer tables (lot 122) and a pair of the Chermayeff chairs (see lot 125) in the late 1930s. They became key features of their homes thereafter, seen for example in the sitting-room and nursery respectively in a 1953 article in House and Garden about their former gardener’s cottage in Tring Park, Hertfordshire.Indeed, Martin and Speight enjoyed a longstanding friendship with Chermayeff and his wife Barbara, who on emigrating from England to the USA via Montreal in 1940, wrote to the couple: ‘We have met with great kindness and hospitality…we leave for the States on April 3 staying with Gropius…[Montreal]… is an astonishing place…the houses are incomplete and unindividual – the ‘Flat Book’ should be read.’ (Letter from Serge and Barbara Chermayeff of 28 March 1940 to Lesie Martin and Sadie Speight, Professor Sir Leslie Martin Personal Archive, National Galleries of Scotland GMA A70/4/1)In about 1960, ‘Le Corbusier’ dining chairs by Thonet were acquired for use in Martin’s studio in The Mill, the central building in a complex converted by the couple in Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire (four offered here as lot 123). Photographs of them in situ are reproduced in Martin’s 1983 publication Buildings and Ideas 1933-83 From the Studio of Leslie Martin and his Associates. In the late 1970s, Martin and Speight purchased a number of ‘Carmite’ chairs by Vico Magistretti, which formed part of the ‘background for living’ at The Barns nearby, to where they moved in 1977 (five offered here as lot 124). Originally built as the village granary in 1642, it was converted and extended for domestic and professional use.Martin and Speight chose their furniture with great care, and once acquired, it was treasured. Indeed, in 1992 Michael Parkin wrote: ‘Most of the contents of the Martins' home dated from this period, from the early Thirties, with chairs by Serge Chermayeff and Marcel Breuer, tables by Alvar Aalto, lights by Jorn Utzon and even a coffee service by Ben Nicholson.’ (Michael Parkin, Obituary of Sadie Speight, The Independent, 27 October 1992). The couple were arbiters of the very best in twentieth-century design and civilised living, in which the tables and chairs presented here played a long-term role.
§ Anthony Benjamin (British 1931-2002) Roxy Bias Suite, 1972 complete set of six, comprising Butterfly Echo, Erase Function, Inverse Echo, Multi-Mode Jitter, O Factor and Ringing Filter, each signed, titled, dated and numbered 59/95 in pencil (in the margin), silkscreen on BFK Rives handmade paper, printed by Kevin Harris at Calvert Studio Dimensions:each sheet 105.5cm x 76.5cm (41 1/2in x 30 1/8in) Provenance:ProvenanceThe Estate of the Artist. Note: A Journey from Social Realism to Abstract Expressionism: Works from the Estate of Anthony BenjaminFew artists successfully span both Modern and Contemporary periods in British art whilst moving between multiple mediums. Anthony Benjamin (1931-2022) was one such polymath working in painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture in wood, metal and plastic. Benjamin wrote that, for him, ‘an idea is more important to a man than any physical object’, in the catalogue for his 1966 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Chris Stevens, then curator of modern British art and Head of Displays at Tate Britain, described Benjamin as ‘an anarchist who ignored trends and forged his own path’. A bit of a loner and a bit of a thinker, Benjamin was quick to accept opportunities to work in new spaces, learning from the best. It was in Paris in the late 50’s, at Atelier 17 with William Stanley Hayter, that he experimented with new forms of painting, moving away from the landscape abstraction of St Ives. However, a constant in his practice was a precision of line, an incomparable quality of execution and an intense understanding of colour and form. Benjamin thought as he made and his thinking was always one-step ahead of the rest. It was during the 1970s, in collaboration with leading printer Kevin Harris at Calvert Studio, that Benjamin produced his seminal series of screenprints Roxy Bias Suite. Inspired by his student Brian Eno, Benjamin was fascinated by the new electronic music Eno was composing. Each of the six images in the series was named after computer music terms such as Inverse Echo and Multi-Mode Jitter. The screenprints use outrageously clashing bold colours, almost as if electrified and challenge the viewer with uncompromising energy. Sumptuous pieces, they were both of the time but also way-ahead of their time. No matter what Benjamin turned his hand to the results were always perfectly executed. In the 1990s he returned to drawing with a solo show at Gimpel Fils in London. Large scale works, they are more paintings in graphite than drawings. Involving a complex range of techniques of masking and erasure, of painting with graphite dust as well as drawing with broad pencils, these works incorporate texture and atmosphere, geometric forms, polar whites and intense blacks. They are some of the most powerfully evocative images that Benjamin produced. Throughout his career Benjamin held teaching posts at a variety of colleges of art and universities including time spent in the USA and Canada as Professor of Art at the University of Calgary and Hayward State College in California. His work is now held in a great number of international public collections including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Tate, UK and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
§ Albert Reuss (Austrian 1889-1975) The Desolate Tree monogrammed (upper right), oil on canvas Dimensions:36cm x 46cm (14in x 18in) Provenance:ProvenancePrivate Collection, UK. Note: Out of Context and Out of Time: Works by Albert Reuss Albert Reuss’s work often evoked connections with Surrealism and in particular the work of Salvador Dalí and Giorgio de Chirico. Objects often inhabit and float in space: a dress-maker’s mannequin, three-legged chair or an isolated tree irregularly sit in abandoned landscapes having lost connection to their normal environment, which was presumably partly a reflection of Reuss’s own displacement.Born in Vienna in 1889, Reuss gained success in his own country with his first one-man exhibition held at the Würthle Gallery in Vienna in 1926. The show sold well and brought him the security of a teaching post as well as election to the Künstlerbund Hagen in 1927; he continued to make a living from his art for the next decade in Austria. However, following the Anschluss in 1938 Reuss fled to Britain, leaving behind his reputation and never to return to his homeland.After periods in St Ives and Cheltenham, Reuss and his wife eventually moved to Mousehole in Cornwall in 1948. They largely kept a distance from the thriving artistic community in St Ives and he continued with his distinctive style which was gentle and calm but with a melancholic tone.The Kunsthandel Widder Gallery provided a fitting description of this post-war work:'Objects, floating relinquished through space and having lost any foothold, predominate his imagery...Ripped out of their natural context, those objects tell the story of a voyage, of a kind of abandonment of an object that does not fit in its new environment. Reuss's artwork, style and choice of subject matter invoke an association with Surrealism. Dalí and Chirico are but the two most important artists…[who]…bring to mind Reuss's artwork. Reuss's depiction of people has a similarly estranged air about them as those of his objects. Taken out of context, of time, of place, the pictured people appear oddly strange. Melancholic and lonely, but also calm and gentle, Reuss's creations remind the viewer of the art of Josef Floch.'Reuss’s work is held in numerous significant galleries, notably the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Belvedere Gallery and Albertina in Vienna and the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance. He held regular one-man shows during his lifetime at the O’Hana Gallery in London from 1953, as well as receiving solo exhibitions in Birmingham and Cheltenham, amongst others.
§ Gerald Leslie Brockhurst (British 1890-1978) Adolescence (Kathleen Nancy Woodward), 1932 (Fletcher 75) signed in pencil (in the margin lower right), from the unnumbered edition of 90, etching on wove paper Dimensions:plate 26.5cm x 37cm (10 1/2in x 14 3/4in); sheet 33.6cm x 45.6cm (131/4in x 17 7/8in), unframed Note: Adolescence is the most famous and virtuoso image of Brockhurst’s career and is widely considered a masterpiece of twentieth-century printmaking.Having shown early promise and commitment to his studies, Brockhurst enrolled at Birmingham School of Art aged just twelve years old. He later entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1907. Brockhurst’s trajectory to success was set early on, as in both schools he was awarded many of their highest accolades. After travel in France and Italy before the outbreak of World War One, followed by a five-year period spent living in Ireland, Brockhurst eventually re-settled in the English capital. Over the course of the 1920s he made his name in artistic circles, foremost as an outstanding printmaker at this point in time, while his reputation as a painter of extraordinary skill would come to fruition a decade later.Adolescence is rightly regarded as a significant artistic achievement. In 1924, Hugh Stokes encapsulated the artist’s technique as follows: ‘What…[Brockhurst]…is gradually attaining… is a soft and velvety richness of quality in which line disappears, although the form is based upon line.’ It is a startling process which results in a remarkable level of finesse. Brockhurst’s ability to convey such an extraordinary variety of texture and tone in Adolescence make it a prized work among collectors, as too does its period elegance and subtle sensuality.As with many of history’s great artworks, the backstory can add as much appeal for collectors as can the aesthetics of the image itself. Adolescence is one such example of this. Brockhurst had attracted scandal (with the added benefit of renown) due to his affair with Kathleen Woodward, a 16-year-old life model for whom he subsequently left his wife and former muse Anaïs Folin. In the manner of his friend Augustus John, Brockhurst re-christened Kathleen ‘Dorette’, and she came to feature in many of his most successful and notable portraits. In Adolescence, Dorette is depicted seated nude on her bed, assessing herself in a dressing-table mirror, lost in her interior world. It is an idealisation of young womanhood, a subject that preoccupied much of Brockhurst’s career, but it is also a study of nascent sexuality. It remains Brockhurst’s most overtly sensual image.
Hitomi Hosono (Japanese 1978-) Tall Wisteria Vase, 2019 signed and dated (to base), moulded, carved and hand-built porcelain with an interior of dancing sprigs Dimensions:36.5cm high, 15.5cm diameter (14 3/8in high, 6 1/8in diameter) Note: “It is my intention to transfer the leaf’s beauty and detail into my ceramic work, using it as my own language to weave new stories for objects.” (Hitomi Hosono) After growing up and studying in Japan, Hosono studied at the Danmarks Designkole in Copenhagen (2005-6), before receiving a Masters degree from the Royal College of Art in London (2009). In 2017-8 she was artist in residence at Wedgwood.Hosono is known for intricate ceramic vessels inspired by Wedgwood Jasperware that reference the natural world and botanical studies, and are known for their delicacy, movement, light and depth.
§ Susan Hiller (American-British 1940-2019) Saving and Spending - Ikons of Desire, 1977-80 set of 14 works, version 1 of 2, the final work signed (in pen), colour xerox and ink Dimensions:each 29cm x 20.2cm (11 3/8in x 8in) Provenance:ProvenanceGimpel Fils, London.ExhibitedGimpel and Hanover, Zurich, Susan Hiller, March 1982;Midland Group, November 1982;Gimpel Fils, London, Susan Hiller, Monument and Other Works, 1982;Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, Ten Years Work, 1984. Note: Susan Hiller (1940-2019) is widely regarded as one of the most influential women artists of her generation, as well as a pioneer of installation and multimedia art. Born in the USA, she made London her home in the late 1960s, where she became a key voice in the nascent counter-culture and feminist movements. Her practice spanned a broad range of media including installation, video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance, artist's books and writing. Her work often took for its subject aspects of culture that were overlooked, marginalised, or disregarded – which in turn spoke to issues of gender, class and politics. Hiller freely collaged ordinary found objects into her work, using photo-mat machines, children’s wallpaper, postcards and other commonly disregarded or denigrated aspects of popular culture, blurring the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’, challenging our perceptions of cultural value After graduating from Smith College, Massachusetts, in 1961, Hiller had pursued doctoral studies in anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans, conducting fieldwork in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. However, she became uncomfortable with academic anthropology's claim to objectivity; she wrote that she did not wish her research to become part of anthropology's “objectification of the contrariness of lived events”. During a lecture on African art, she made the decision to abandon anthropology to become an artist. She lived in France, Morocco, Wales and India with her husband, the writer David Coxhead, before settling in London, where she made that very ‘contrariness of lived events’ the basis of her practise, focussing on the products of our society – our dreaming through commodities – that are often overlooked, ignored, or repressed. Her projects have been described as ‘investigations into the unconscious of our culture’. As she explained: “I’m committed to working with what I call ghosts, that is, with cultural discards, fragments and things that are invisible to most people but intensely important to a few: situations, ideas and experiences that haunt us collectively.” In regards to the Lucid Dreams works, Hiller noted – “I’m trying to erode the supposed boundary between dream life and waking life. The work is clearly positioned in the waking world since [it] start[s] off with photomat portraiture, but uses the disconnected and fragmented images produced automatically by these machines as analogies for the kind of dream images we all know, for instance suddenly catching a glimpse of oneself from the back… it doesn’t seem to me accidental that the machines produce this kind of image because, as I’ve been saying for years about popular, disposable imagery, there is something there beyond the obvious, which is why it’s worth using in art (the Artist quoted in Susan Hiller 1973-83: The Muse My Sister, The Orchard Gallery, Londonderry, 1984, p.25) Hiller's work features in numerous international private and public collections including the Tate Gallery, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; National Portrait Gallery, London; British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Museum of Norway, Oslo; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and the Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporañea, Brumadinho, Brazil.
§ Geoffrey Clarke R.A. (British 1924-2014) Pyramid, 1993 (LeGrove S703) stamped artist's mark, aluminium Dimensions:20.5cm high (8in high) Provenance:ProvenancePrivate Collection, UK.ExhibitedThe Fine Art Society Limited, London, Geoffrey Clarke: Sculpture, Constructions and Works on Paper 1949-2000, 9 October - 2 November 2000, no.75.LiteratureLeGrove, Judith, Geoffrey Clarke Sculptor: Catalogue Raisonné, London: Pangolin and Lund Humphries, 2017, p.211, SS703, illustrated. Note: Geoffrey Clarke: Intimate yet MonumentalThe works by Geoffrey Clarke offered here date from 1951 to 1993, spanning over forty years of his long and prolific career and representing a range of phases within his practice. What they have in common, however, is an intimate yet monumental character in which sculptures as modestly-sized as 10 centimetres high encapsulate a power and presence more readily associated with larger works.Head I of 1951 comes from an early series and was made whilst Clarke was studying at the Royal College of Art in London. Worked in iron, it reveals an exploration of Cubism and Surrealism with a frank appreciation of the materiality of his medium. Clarke graduated the following year, with his talent being immediately recognised with nothing less than his inclusion in the New Aspects of British Sculpture exhibition in the British Pavilion of the 26th Venice Biennale that summer. Clarke’s work was shown alongside that of seven other sculptors, namely Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Bernard Medows, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull. He was therefore positioned within the vanguard of post-war British sculpture and his career was launched to spectacular effect.Maquette for Sainsbury Sculpture Competition of 1965 fast forwards us to the mid-1960s, Clarke’s interest in public commissions and the associated use of cast aluminium; Ann Elliott has described the sandbox he built for this purpose in his studio foundry in Suffolk in 1954 (see Ann Elliott, ‘Clarke, Geoffrey Cyril Petts’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, on-line entry accessed 19/9/23). A totemic central element is crowned with a spiralling form whose upwards thrust is akin to organic growth. The varied surface treatment of the two parts is key to expressing the contrast between their presentations of mass and movement.Torrii Prone (i) and Toriio also date from 1965. As Peter Black has explained ‘The title ‘Torii’ applied to this series of sculptures derives from the ceremonial gateways to Japanese Shinto shrines. The essence of these works is the contrast between the inanimate slab of metal and the organic structures that bud and grow from the top.’ (Peter Black, Geoffrey Clarke: Symbols for Man, Sculptures and Graphic Work 1949-94, Lund Humphries, London, 1994, p.70). This series encompassed works based on vertical and horizontal formats in which Clarke explored a softened geometry combined with a curvaceous and rhythmic solidity. It is interesting to compare the organicism of these sculptures with Adams’s contemporary Vertical Form No. 1, an austere and imposing bronzed steel work made on a human scale and the suppleness of Bernard Meadows’ Pointing Figure of two years later.The Sea at Aldeburgh of 1978 is a particularly personal work. Clarke had close links to the Suffolk seaside town, not least owning its Martello Tower between 1967 and 1971; the tower and its surrounding topography fed into his work for some time. Made from mixed media applied to a small rectangle of polystyrene – more readily associated in Clarke’s practice with carving and the casting process – it is a simplified sea view in which the composition is split almost equally between sky and sea.Column and Pyramid both date from 1993. By this point in his career, Clarke had brought together formerly disparate elements to create sculptural planes enlivened by rich, deep-relief patterning which encases (or reveals) a raw core. Both works refer to significant architectural structures, whose power is yet retained in their modest scale.Clarke’s 70th birthday in 1994 was marked by several exhibitions, including a solo show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park which featured a cast of Head I on its catalogue cover. Ever interested in new materials, Clarke made his first work in wood in 1996 and, with an eye to his legacy, donated his archive to Leeds Museums and Galleries in 2012, two years before his death.
Serge Chermayeff (Russian / British 1900-1996) Pair of 'Plan' Chairs, designed 1933 laminated beech plywood and upholstery Dimensions:77cm (30 1/4in) high, 66cm (26in) wide, 75cm (29 1/2in) deep Provenance:ProvenanceAcquired by Leslie Martin and Sadie Speight in the late 1930s and thence by descent to the current owner. Note: The architect Leslie Martin (1908-2000) and his wife, the designer Sadie Speight (1906-92) played leading roles in twentieth-century architecture and design and as champions of progressive art. They met at the University of Manchester’s School of Architecture in the 1920s and married in 1935.Martin is renowned as much for his ground-breaking architectural practice as for his research and contribution to education. He held many important public and academic positions, including Principal Assistant Architect for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (1939-48), Architect to the London County Council (1953-56) and Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University (1956-72). He was the architect of some remarkable post-war buildings, including the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank (1951), the Gulbenkian Foundation Centre for Modern Art in Lisbon (1979) and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow (1988).Speight was also a qualified architect and had a celebrated career as a designer. She was a founder member of the Design Research Unit of the Council of Industrial Design in 1943, established to make designer skills available to industry. Her designs for products such as kettles, electric irons, textiles and rugs are particularly revered. After her death, Martin paid testament to Speight’s skill at converting properties in which they could live and work, creating a ‘background for living’ by the selection and placement of furniture, carpets, fabrics, upholstery, ceramics, books and works of art in homes and studios which were widely admired.One of Martin and Speight’s collaborative projects, and their most obvious promotion of contemporary art, was their involvement with the seminal 1937 publication Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art. Martin was a co-editor with Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, whilst Speight acted as Secretary and Barbara Hepworth was responsible for its layout. Circle highlighted the vital British contribution to the European abstract movement and was re-printed in 1971.In 1938, Herbert Read commissioned Martin and Speight as joint authors of The Flat Book, which was published the following year. Conceived as a practical guide to contemporary furniture, fabrics and household projects, it is now considered a reference book about the 1930s Modernist aesthetic and is admired as an essential treatise on how the best of European design could be introduced into the British home. The foreword described its aim to be a ‘catalogue of well-designed furniture and equipment’ whilst attempting to ‘set out certain standards of contemporary design and…furnish at least a basis of criticism…to help the reader in selecting his flat…[and]…the problems of planning and furnishing’.Amongst the items featured in the ‘Living and Sleeping Space’ section was a ‘Nest of tables, by Marcel Breuer, birch, £3 13s 6d (Isokon Furniture Co)’ (p.116) and a ‘Plan’ chair by Serge Chermayeff, described as an ‘Easy chair, 5 gns (Plan Ltd)’ (p.134), manufactured by the cutting-edge design companies Isokon Furniture Company and Plan Ltd respectively. These items alone could be said to encapsulate Modernist living in their innovative use of laminated plywood and sleek, simplified silhouettes. Martin and Speight acquired a set of the Breuer tables (lot 122) and a pair of the Chermayeff chairs (see lot 125) in the late 1930s. They became key features of their homes thereafter, seen for example in the sitting-room and nursery respectively in a 1953 article in House and Garden about their former gardener’s cottage in Tring Park, Hertfordshire.Indeed, Martin and Speight enjoyed a longstanding friendship with Chermayeff and his wife Barbara, who on emigrating from England to the USA via Montreal in 1940, wrote to the couple: ‘We have met with great kindness and hospitality…we leave for the States on April 3 staying with Gropius…[Montreal]… is an astonishing place…the houses are incomplete and unindividual – the ‘Flat Book’ should be read.’ (Letter from Serge and Barbara Chermayeff of 28 March 1940 to Lesie Martin and Sadie Speight, Professor Sir Leslie Martin Personal Archive, National Galleries of Scotland GMA A70/4/1)In about 1960, ‘Le Corbusier’ dining chairs by Thonet were acquired for use in Martin’s studio in The Mill, the central building in a complex converted by the couple in Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire (four offered here as lot 123). Photographs of them in situ are reproduced in Martin’s 1983 publication Buildings and Ideas 1933-83 From the Studio of Leslie Martin and his Associates. In the late 1970s, Martin and Speight purchased a number of ‘Carmite’ chairs by Vico Magistretti, which formed part of the ‘background for living’ at The Barns nearby, to where they moved in 1977 (five offered here as lot 124). Originally built as the village granary in 1642, it was converted and extended for domestic and professional use.Martin and Speight chose their furniture with great care, and once acquired, it was treasured. Indeed, in 1992 Michael Parkin wrote: ‘Most of the contents of the Martins' home dated from this period, from the early Thirties, with chairs by Serge Chermayeff and Marcel Breuer, tables by Alvar Aalto, lights by Jorn Utzon and even a coffee service by Ben Nicholson.’ (Michael Parkin, Obituary of Sadie Speight, The Independent, 27 October 1992). The couple were arbiters of the very best in twentieth-century design and civilised living, in which the tables and chairs presented here played a long-term role.
§ Yinka Shonibare C.B.E, R.A. (British / Nigerian 1960-) Running (for RCA Secret) titled (lower right), mixed media on postcard Dimensions:15cm x 10cm (6in x 4in) Provenance:Provenance Donated by the Artist to RCA Secret, Royal College of Art, London, where acquired by the current owner. Note: The Royal College of Art’s fundraising exhibition RCA Secret was established in 1994 and was London’s original postcard exhibition.All proceeds from the annual event go to the RCA Fund, which in turn enables the College to offer bursaries to those students who would otherwise not be able to attend its storied classrooms, allowing talented individuals, regardless of their background or financial circumstances, to access a unique educational experience at a formative time in their lives.Past contributors to the exhibition include renowned alumni and friends of the College such as Christopher Bailey, David Bowie, Sir James Dyson, Tracey Emin, Norman Foster, Thomas Heatherwick, Anish Kapoor, Mike Leigh, Stella McCartney, Steve McQueen, Yoko Ono, Zandra Rhodes and Sir Paul Smith. Current students and recent alumni are also invited to contribute – adding to the fascinating mix of styles and responses.However, when the works go on display, all are anonymous – leaving it up to the viewer to decide if the work they like is by an art-world luminary or a rising star. Some are quite obvious (a few artists miss the memo and sign their works on the front); the majority are not. Part of this is due to there being no limitation on medium: from photography and collage, to drawing, painting and even sculpture and embroidery, the only requirement is that all artworks should be postcard-sized.To buy the works, members of the public register to gain a buyer’s ID – after which, it’s first come, first served (capped at four works per buyer until the very last days of the show). This wonderful collection [lots 292-300] was put together by possibly the most dedicated follower of RCA Secret, who was first in line every year between 2002 and 2018 and as such it represents the best of what the exhibition is about. There are works by major names such as Grayson Perry, Yinka Shonibare, Mimmo Paladino, Maggi Hambling, David Bailey and Richard Wentworth, mixed in with jewels by artists less well known, all with something in common, that particular collaborative and open-hearted spirit of the exhibition.
§ John Grenville (British 1918-2004) Candle Desk Stand, 1960 hallmarked for London, silverDimensions:23.3cm high, 22.5cm wide (9 1/4in high, 8 8/9in wide)Provenance:Grenville originally studied fine art at Farnham (1938-40), before studying silversmithing at the Central School of Arts & Crafts (1945-7) after the war. Following on from this he ran a workshop in London, before moving to Broxford in Suffolk in 1966, and opening a shop in Clare. In the 1967 Crafts Journal it stated that 'John Grenville is one of the few craftsmen whose work is not subsidised by teaching'.
Nao Matsunaga (Japanese 1980-) The Illusion of Reflection 2, 2016 coiled and slabbed stoneware, white slab glaze, sgraffito marks inlaid with porcelain on a wood stand with six painted legs Dimensions:75cm high, 29cm deep (29 1/2in high, 11 3/8in deep) Provenance:LiteratureAdamson, Glenn, Martina Droth and Simon Olding (eds.), Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, pp.184-6, cat. no.7, illustrated. ExhibitedYale Centre for British Art, Newhaven, Connecticut, Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery, 14th September - 3rd December, 2017;Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery, 20 March - 17 June 2018;New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury, Gillian Ayres, Rachel Jones, Nao Matsunaga, 21 September - 17 November 2019.
§ Roy De Maistre C.B.E. (Australian / British 1894-1968) Crucifixion, 1945 signed (lower right), oil on canvas Dimensions:25cm x 20.5cm (9 7/8in x 8in) Provenance:ProvenanceCelia Broadbent (neé Keogh) and by direct descent to the present owner.Celia Broadbent was de Maistre’s cousin once removed, and his executor and friend; her older sister, Camilla Margery Keogh, was the subject of ‘La Folie', considered one of de Maistre’s major works. Note: with label signed and inscribed THIS CRUCIFIXION, painted from notes and studies made at St. Jean-de-Luz in 1932 was begun on the day after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima - painted in Sorrow for the innocent victims and in condemnation of those politicians who perpetrated this appalling act of mass murder in defiance of Christian love and compassion. / 13 Eccleston Street, London, 1945. (to reverse) Roy de Maistre: ‘Fellas doing things to Fellas’Described as ‘the man who taught Francis Bacon to paint’ (Ronald Alley interviewed by Heather Johnson 1988), Roy de Maistre moved from his native Australia to London in 1930, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had trained at Sydney Art School and the Royal Art Society, had spent two years travelling in Europe between 1923 and 1925 and had had two solo exhibitions, at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney in 1926 and 1928. Despite this successful start to his career, de Maistre looked to London for a more progressive art world into which he was immediately admitted. In his first year in the English capital, de Maistre had a solo show at the Beaux Arts Gallery and a joint exhibition of paintings and furniture with Francis Bacon, held in the latter’s studio at 7 Queensberry Mews.De Maistre’s friendship with Bacon was closest in the early 1930s, though they remained in contact until the former’s death in 1968. There is some debate as to whether they had studios in the same buildings but on different floors, but what is certain is de Maistre’s fascination with Bacon’s working spaces, which he painted on several occasions. As de Maistre’s biographer, Heather Johnson, has declared ‘the main importance of the association between de Maistre and Bacon is the influence on their respective work…in the early 1930s de Maistre had just as great or greater influence on Bacon.’ (Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years 1930-1968, Craftsman House, Roseville East, 1995, p.22).The 1930s were a particularly fertile period in de Maistre’s career; his work featured in cutting-edge publications, such as Herbert Read’s 1933 Art Now and in group exhibitions including at the Zwemmer Gallery and Leicester Galleries. He had solo exhibitions at the avant-garde Mayor Gallery in 1934 and at the Calmann Gallery four years later. In 1934 he established the School of Contemporary Painting and Drawing with Martin Bloch, with its stated aim acting as a manifesto for his own work, namely ‘to help the pupils to give expression to their enjoyment of the beauty and significance of things seen and experienced; to understand and appreciate the materials they use and to recognise the logic of the laws of colour and composition’ (see Johnson, op.cit., p.82).Two Figures dates from this important period. Johnson explained that in this painting, compared with other contemporary works, ‘de Maistre has…concentrated on a sensitive and intellectual rapport between the figures rather than a purely sexual one, the blending of the figures and their closeness is much more successful’ (Johnson, ibid., p.28). Two Figures is all the more significant given de Maistre’s instructions to his Executors that, following his death, ‘a large body of work, described as ‘fellas doing things to fellas’ be destroyed (see Johnson, ibid., p. 28). The two men are seen unclothed, caught in a moment of intimate relaxation – both have their eyes closed and are viewed in profile. Bold black outlining provides the structure of a pictorial design based on shallow depth, whilst a harmonious palette, direct technique and frank appreciation of the male form create an image which is at once sensual and bold.In contrast, Crucifixion of 1945, whilst based on earlier notes and studies, was painted in response to the dropping of the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima on 6 August of that year. By this point in his career, de Maistre was becoming known as a modernist religious painter, not least with the acquisition in 1944 of a work of the same Biblical scene to Iona Abbey. De Maistre formally converted to the Roman Catholic faith in 1951. The 1940s saw him receive solo exhibitions in Leeds and Birmingham and culminated in one at Adams Gallery, London in 1950.The influence of Bacon’s working methods can arguably be detected in Man and Tree of 1959. Johnson posits that Bacon’s use of Portrait of Innocent X by Diego Velázquez in a series of works started in 1951, may have encouraged de Maistre to look to past masters for inspiration. Indeed, she established that Man and Tree is based on a work by Henri Matisse, reproduced in an article about Fauvism in the December 1934 issue of the D’Aci I D’Alla magazine, of which de Maistre owned a copy. (M. A. Cassanyes, ‘Fauvisme’, D’Aci D’Alla, no.179, vol. XXII, December 1934 see Johnson, ibid., pp.163 and 165). This work dates from the period during which de Maistre was preparing his retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, which opened in May 1960.All three of the works by de Maistre presented here formerly belonged to Celia Broadbent (née Keogh). She was a daughter of the artist’s cousin, Camilla Keogh (1866-1948) who was one of his most significant patrons and muses. Celia went on to support de Maistre herself, not least in asking him to design tapestry versions of some of his paintings, which she then stitched (see Johnson, ibid., p. 112).As de Maistre’s patron, Rab Butler, proclaimed: ‘His most impressive quality as an artist was his absolute integrity. He went through long periods of difficulty in earning his living from painting because he refused to conform to any standards other than those which he had rigorously laid down for himself.’ (quoted in Johnson, ibid. p.55)
Louis Wain (British 1860-1939) Hockey, circa 1904signed (lower left), pen, ink, watercolour, gouache and pencil on wove paper on Artist's prepared board42cm x 71.5cm (16 1/2in x 28 1/8in) For the Love of Cats: Works by Louis Wain "He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves."H.G. Wells, 1925 In turn of the century Britain, the illustrations of Louis Wain were virtually inescapable. His world of anthropomorphised cats was so popular that there was demand for an annual, which ran from 1902 until 1921. He wrote and illustrated over 100 children’s books over the course of his lifetime. Wain was additionally a recognised expert on the domestic cat and was elected president and chairman of the National Cat Club.As well as being thoroughly charming and skilfully executed, collectors are enthralled by the fact Wain’s art seems to deeply channel the eccentricities of the man himself. His life story is a bizarre and, in many ways, tragic one. It is perhaps unsurprising that it was recently dramatized on the big screen in ‘The Electrical Life of Louis Wain’ (2021), starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Wain.When his father died in 1880 Wain became the sole provider for his mother and five sisters. He was then tragically widowed after just three years of marriage in 1887. He and his remaining family lived together in Kent for much of his adult life. Despite his great success as an illustrator over several decades, money was always short, spread across the large household. He was unable to secure much by way of copyright income and so did not receive royalties when his images were later widely reproduced. This subsequently led to the straitened circumstances he lived in when his health later failed.After a three-year period living and working in New York, Wain returned to the family fold in 1910. Despite having been the creator of such ubiquitous imagery for so long, by 1917 demand for his work fell away. Sadly, Wain was committed to a pauper’s asylum in South London in 1924, having been certified insane by his sisters. It has been speculated that he suffered from schizophrenia, though issues may also have been triggered by a serious head injury sustained after falling from an omnibus in 1914. Wain would spend the final 15 years of his life in hospital.When it was discovered what had become of him, a fund was set up to raise money for him and his family. Ramsey MacDonald, the prime minister at the time, even arranged pensions for Wain’s sisters in recognition to of their brother’s contribution to the arts. Wain himself was subsequently able to move to more comfortable housing in Bethlem hospital.Wain continued working throughout his final years, famously producing fascinatingly intricate and esoteric images of cats in bright colours and swirling patterns. They have been viewed as precursors to ‘psychedelic art’, and indeed were unlike anything else of the period: spectacular and peculiar in equal measure.The works offered here are from the peak of this unique artist’s career and are amongst some of the finest examples to have appeared on the market for some years. ‘Hockey’, c.1904, depicts a ferociously competitive cat hockey match with the viewer plunged into the thick of the action. It is one of Wain’s most recognisable and popular images, having been one of the most widely published postcards of 1904-05. ‘To Be Let Unfurnished’ is another fantastic example of Wain’s talent as a world builder: each cat has a sense of its own character, its individual plotline unfolding. The attention to detail is so involved, the characterisation so well observed, it is easy to see why the nation took his imagery to their hearts, and why his cause was taken up so generously when news of his sad fate reached society’s ears. Both works have been in the same family’s collection since at least as early as 1915, and it is with great pleasure that Lyon & Turnbull present them to the market now, having been unseen by the general public for over 100 years.
§ Breon O'Casey (British 1928-2011) Construction, 1966 signed, dated and inscribed to Pat & Roger with love (to postcard to reverse), oil on board assemblage Dimensions:35.7cm x 29cm (14in x 11 1/2in) including frame Provenance:ProvenanceGifted by the Artist to Roger and Pat Leigh, thence by descent; Askew Art, London; Private Collection, UK. Note: Roger Leigh (1925-97), who previously owned this work, was one of Barbara Hepworth's assistants. Breon O’Casey was part of one of the later waves of young avant-garde artists drawn to the bustling fishing settlement of St Ives, arriving in his clapped-out orange Ford transit in 1959. A studio assistant of Denis Mitchell and of the inimitable Barbara Hepworth, O’Casey became a member of the Penwith Society of Arts and an active participant in the artistic life of the town. Highly productive and constantly experimental, O’Casey moved across different media with ease, with his visual language translating across such diverse artforms as painting, jewellery, printmaking, weaving and sculpture. This broad skillset made him relatively hard to pin down from a critical point of view and possibly explains why the spotlight took its time to home in on this fascinating and respected figure within the St Ives School. Since O’Casey’s death in 2011 however, curators and collectors have driven a wave of renewed appreciation of the work of this fascinating polymath.Unconstrained to one medium, simple shapes of undulating and geometric form recur across much of his work. So too does a distinctive palette of earthy brown tones disrupted by jewel-like reds, greens and blues. His reference points are diverse: from his family roots in the Celtic revival (his father was Irish dramatist Sean O’Casey) and his interest in ancient and non-Western culture (for example the Navajo-inspired geometric patterns which appear in his weaving), to the distilled modernist forms of the Bauhaus and the work of St Ives forebears like Ben Nicholson.One key recurring motif is the number three, which took on an almost magical quality for O’Casey. We can note this in the iconography of some of the pieces offered here. In the 1966 assemblage, Construction, we find three simple bands of colour reading as an abstracted, minimalistic take on a natural landscape, to the more monumental Duo, which places three band-like shapes to delineate space in the pictorial plane.Sculpture became an increasing preoccupation, with O’Casey commenting that it “…took the place of weaving and jewellery as the antidote to painting. At first as a sideline, a relief from the anxieties of paint. But gradually it has taken on a more important role and I can say now that it is at least as important to me as painting and I devote an equal amount of time and thought to it.” O’Casey also remarked that, unlike his wholly abstract work in two dimensions, he was almost always drawn to figuration in his sculptural work, very often depicting birds or animals. In the excellent examples offered here we find his deceptively simple balancing act between modern and ancient lexicons, as well as the sense of an artist revelling in the joy of his craft.
National Gallery of Art Washington - Concise Edition 1987 Hardback Book with 160 pages published by Harrison House New York, good condition. Sold on behalf of Michael Sobell Cancer Charity. We combine shipping on all lots. Single book £5.99 UK, £7.99 Europe, £9.99 ROW. We can ship a parcel up to 20kg which will take approx. 40 books in UK £12, EUROPE £39.99, ROW, £59.99
History of Western American Art by Royal B Hassrick 1987 Hardback Book First Edition with 192 pages published by Bison Books Ltd London, good condition. Sold on behalf of Michael Sobell Cancer Charity. We combine shipping on all lots. Single book £5.99 UK, £7.99 Europe, £9.99 ROW. We can ship a parcel up to 20kg which will take approx. 40 books in UK £12, EUROPE £39.99, ROW, £59.99
British Art since 1900 by Sir John Rothenstein 1962 Hardback Book First Edition with 181 pages published by Phaidon Publishers Inc, good condition. Sold on behalf of Michael Sobell Cancer Charity. We combine shipping on all lots. Single book £5.99 UK, £7.99 Europe, £9.99 ROW. We can ship a parcel up to 20kg which will take approx. 40 books in UK £12, EUROPE £39.99, ROW, £59.99
Intimate Friends - Scottish Colourists from the Hunterian Art Gallery and the Fleming Collection 2004 Cardbacked Book with 98 pages published by The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation London, good condition. Sold on behalf of Michael Sobell Cancer Charity. We combine shipping on all lots. Single book £5.99 UK, £7.99 Europe, £9.99 ROW. We can ship a parcel up to 20kg which will take approx. 40 books in UK £12, EUROPE £39.99, ROW, £59.99
Christopher Wood Signed Book - Fairies in Victorian Art by Christopher Wood 2000 Hardback Book First Edition with 191 pages published by Antique Collectors' Club Ltd, good condition. Sold on behalf of Michael Sobell Cancer Charity. We combine shipping on all lots. Single book £5.99 UK, £7.99 Europe, £9.99 ROW. We can ship a parcel up to 20kg which will take approx. 40 books in UK £12, EUROPE £39.99, ROW, £59.99
Abstraction - Towards a New Art - Painting 1910 - 20 1980 Hardback Book First Edition with 128 pages published by Tate Gallery Publications Department London, good condition. Sold on behalf of Michael Sobell Cancer Charity. We combine shipping on all lots. Single book £5.99 UK, £7.99 Europe, £9.99 ROW. We can ship a parcel up to 20kg which will take approx. 40 books in UK £12, EUROPE £39.99, ROW, £59.99
Robert Forrester (Cumbrian, 1913-1988) "Grinsdale in December", a sketchy, brisk winter watercolour looking along a road with tractor towards the fringes of the village and farm buildings, signed, titled and dated 1960, in period pen-lined card mount and moulded frame under glass, 36 cm x 54 cm sight size. [Born in Carlisle, Forrester exhibited natural and prodigious talent from an early age. He was employed as an artist / designer by the Carlisle decorative box manufacturers Hudson Scott (later The Metal Box Co) who also exhibited his work. He painted two large murals for the city's Tullie House Museum and Art gallery, wherein further examples of his works are held.]
Loading...-
640875 item(s)/page