BLAST #27 | An online Fin de la Saison

July 2025

The Henderson Collection

The last Modern British Art sale to take place before the summer recess was an online only sale at Bonhams on 15 July of over two hundred works from the collection of Stuart and Claire Henderson. Little was given away about the collectors, except that they lived in a mill cottage and started collecting with affordable prints thirty years ago before progressing into paintings and sculpture, buying from salerooms and reputable dealers like Jenna Burlingham, Alan Wheatley, Katharine House and ZigZag Modern.

But BLAST has located the house for sale in Tamworth-on-Arden in Solihull at a price of £1.375 million. Images of the interior show it crammed full of the art that was for sale. Whilst there was conventional viewing at Bonhams, there was no printed catalogue, no auctioneer, and at times no evidence of bidding - leaving the impression that half the lots had been withdrawn, which they hadn’t.

Much had also been bought at auction over the previous sixteen years, the majority within the last five – which is not exactly a recipe for success when selling at auction. That, and the currently adverse conditions for the market led to a below par £785,000 total including the 28% buyer’s premium, against a £945,000-£1.4 million pre-sale estimate without the premium. In the process, some 79% or 38% of lots went unsold.

Yet there were enough positives to support the view that the lower end of this market is in fairly resilient shape.

Paintings

Wallis, Sutherland, Hayman show form

Leading the field were two recently acquired paintings by the Cornish primitive Alfred Wallis that managed to recoup their outlay.

Some anticipation centred around the artist’s very appealing Trawler Passing a Lighthouse, originally from the Dartington Hall Trust collection, which the Hendersons had bought in Cornwall in 2023 for a bullish £96,800 against a £60,000 estimate. Back for sale already and with a £70,000 estimate it calmed market nerves selling for a premium inclusive £114,700, the third highest price for a Wallis at auction according to the Artnet database. Another work by Wallis, Saltash Bridge, which the Hendersons bought shortly after it sold in 2012 for £11,250, doubled that price to sell for £28,160.

*Lot 110. Alfred Wallis, Trawler Passing a Lighthouse, painted circa 1935, oil on board, 36.5 x 52.4 cm (irregular). Sold for a premium inclusive £114,700*

*Lot 176. Graham Sutherland O.M., Tin Mine: Miner Drilling, pencil, crayon, ink and gouache on paper, squared for transfer, 40 x 32.5 cm. Executed in 1942. Sold for £16,640*

Over twenty works on paper by Graham Sutherland who Henderson refers to in his catalogue note in same breath as Francis Bacon, were on offer. Sutherland will also feature in British Art Fair’s Unsung exhibition in September, not because he is unknown but because he was eclipsed by Bacon and is currently out of fashion selling below estimates, according to dealer/exhibitor Christopher Kingzett. This version was only partly borne out by Bonhams’ results. The Hendersons didn’t tend buy at the top of the market and their Sutherlands reflected that with estimates ranging from about £1,500- £7,000. Highest and most successful price was a double estimate £16,640 paid for a 1942 watercolour of a Tin Miner Drilling. Out of fashion Sutherland may be, but half of his works sold within or above estimate. Of ten that had been acquired at auction though, most brought a negative return. A study of trees, bought in 2013 for £3,500 for instance, now sold for £2,876.

One notable example was a landscape study (Lot 200) by Sutherland which the Hendersons bought with some enthusiasm in 2016 when it sold as part of the Brian Sewell collection at Christie’s for a triple estimate £5,000. Without the provenance of the popular art critic even mentioned in the catalogue, however, it sold below estimate at Bonhams for £1,250. But who would bet against such buys reaping rewards in the future?

A small but nonetheless profitable mark up for the Hendersons was a view of Green Park by Ruskin Spear which they had bought in 2012 for £1,500 and sold above estimate for £3,072.

Faring much better was an undated painting, Jacob’s Dream, by Patrick Hayman (1915–1988), demand for which was seemingly unaffected by the massive offload of work from his estate at minimal prices this year in Cornwall. The Hendersons had acquired Jacob’s Creek in 2008 for a six times estimate £1,500. But, far from paying too much, they had backed a winner as it sold for £5,632, the third highest for Hayman at auction and the highest since 2001, according to Artnet.

*Lot 182. Patrick Hayman, Jacob’s Dream, oil on board, 20.5 x 40.5cm. Sold for £5,632*

Sculpture

Going down - Turnbull, Armitage, Hepworth crystal

The Henderson’s had a large quantity of sculpture in their collection. Some of these had only been bought in the present decade, so were not fresh to the market. A two-foot-high, bronze Mask, 1988, by William Turnbull had been offered by Christie’s in 2023 with a £50,000 estimate and was bought after the auction where it had been unsold. Turnbull’s previously turbo charged market (record £701,000 in 2015) has lost some of that energy and, re-offered by the Hendersons with the same estimate, Mask failed to sell at auction again at Bonhams.

Things didn’t work out so well either for another post-war sculptor, Kenneth Armitage, whose prices have calmed down since a spike ten years ago (reaching a record £218,750 in 2018). The Hendersons bought a 1953 plaster, Standing Group, by Armitage just after it had made £24,375 at Sotheby’s in 2013 and tried to sell it at Sotheby’s in 2023 with a £12,000 estimate with no luck. It didn’t go much better at Bonhams two years later as it went unsold again, this time with a £10,000 estimate. An Armitage bronze of a Sprawling Woman, 1957, which they bought last year for £18,900 was too familiar to the market and went unsold with a £15,000 estimate, and another bronze, Seated Figure with a Square Head, 1955/7, that had cost £31,700 in 2023 had no bids to meet the £30,000 estimate.

A case of how direct provenance can affect prices was demonstrated by a good Reg Butler sculpture, Girl Pulling Shirt over her Head, 1958, for which the Hendersons had paid a double estimate £32,500 at the David Bowie collection sale in 2016. They tried to sell it at Sotheby’s in 2020 with a £20,000 estimate but without luck, and at Bonhams, without that direct link to Bowie, it sold for only £12,800, just below estimate.

In the same Sotheby’s 2020 sale they also tried unsuccessfully to sell a cluster of late Barbara Hepworth lead crystal forms, Four Hemispheres, 1970, which they had bought in 2014 for £25,000. They tried again with Bonhams online at £20,000 but failed there too.

Going Up - Cliffe, Hoskin, Mitchell, Meadows

Lesser-known sculptors seemed to be doing much better. Holding steady was Intaglio, 1969, a small John Milne sculpture the Hendersons bought at Sotheby’s in 2014 for £4,000 and which sold for the same price they paid.

Selling over estimate was a 1953 bronze, Standing Figure, by the underrated Henry Cliffe which tripled estimates to sell for £5,120, the fourth highest auction price for a sculpture by the artist (a painting by Cliffe will be included in British Art Fair’s Unsung exhibition this September). Once owned by Cliffe and subsequently by the Surrealist collector Jeffrey Sherwin, was a small welded steel sculpture, Tripod, (c1950s/60’s) by another underrated artist, John Hoskin. In 2019 it was sold from Sherwin’s collection to the Hendersons for a double estimate £2,250, and moved a notch upwards at Bonhams selling for £3,584. Like Cliffe, one feels Hoskin will become more sought after when recognised.

Already well on that path is Denis Mitchell, an assistant to Barbara Hepworth, by whom several works were on offer. Reaping a small gain was his 1974 slender three-foot-high bronze, Arwednack, which overtook its £11,400 price in 2009 to sell for £17,920. A better return was had for Corva, 1955, a rare wood carving by Mitchell, which had been bought in 2009 for £8,400 and now sold for £17,920. And again, Mitchell’s tall polished bronze, Trelissick, conceived in 1959 and cast in polished bronze in 1988, which had cost a triple estimate £16,250 in 2009, sailed past a £18,000 estimate to sell for £33,200.

Continuing the upward sculpture theme. A 1958 bronze, Frightened Bird, by Bernard Meadows which had cost £6,144 at Bonhams just 20 months earlier sold for £15,080 – so something positive is happening.

Books

The Uglow Papers.
Andrew Lambirth (Yale University Press)

*Book Image: Book Jacket with Palm Tree by Euan Uglow, 1971*

There’s always more than one book to be written about a great artist, especially one like Euan Uglow (1932-2000), a remarkable figurative painter who kept himself out of the public limelight but was revered by an inner circle of cognoscenti. At the time of his death Uglow’s estate was handled by Browse & Darby, the gallery which had represented him since 1975. The gallery then staged exhibitions and published books on him such as Susan Campbell’s Euan Uglow: Some Memories of the Painter, a compilation of interviews with Uglow and artists and curators Craigie Aitchison, Anthony Eyton, Catherine Lampert and Paula Rego amongst others, who knew him, as well as Richard Kendall’s catalogue essay for the 2003 exhibition, Euan Uglow: Controlled Passion, at Abbot Hall Gallery.

But when relations soured between the gallery and the executors of Uglow’s estate, the business side of representation went to the Marlborough Gallery, which was still considered a leading gallery for modern and senior contemporary artists. In 2007 Marlborough staged an exhibition of paintings and drawings from Uglow’s estate to coincide with the publication of the first book devoted solely to his paintings (Euan Uglow: The Complete Paintings by Catherine Lampert, Yale University Press). This was followed by an exhibition at Marlborough of Uglow drawings from the estate in 2014.

By then Uglow’s auction record had advanced from £58,000 during his lifetime, to £602,500 in 2014. Selling Uglow had become big business and other galleries – viz Piano Nobile, which staged a Uglow/Coldstream exhibition in 2016 – were looking for a slice of the action.

Meanwhile, Browse & Darby continued to maintain a role in the Uglow market staging three exhibitions of his work since 2012, the last being in October 2024. Their rivalry with Marlborough, though, had shifted by then.

In 2023, aware that the gallery was about to implode, three directors left Marlborough to form Frankie Rossi Art Projects to represent certain of the gallery artists. Not having a gallery, Rossi quickly arranged exhibitions for Frank Auerbach and Maggi Hambling at the Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert gallery in St James’s. In a separate arrangement, Holland-Hibbert then took on the Uglow estate with Rossi direct from Marlborough, and staged an exhibition of drawings from Uglow’s estate in October 2023. When it became known that Browse & Darby were planning a Uglow show late in 2024, Holland-Hibbert swiftly mounted a Uglow paintings exhibition for May that year and announced his official representation of the estate.

Not surprisingly he has now offered to host a belated launch this September of the latest book on Uglow – a compilation of anecdotes and opinions by those who knew him such as Cherie Blair, who modelled for him, the designer Paul Smith, and the artist Frank Auerbach. The book has been assembled by the art critic Andrew Lambirth, who developed a close association with Uglow, and has perhaps been the most constant player in the Uglow estate saga having written about him for all his dealers – Browse & Darby, Marlborough and Holland-Hibbert. Lambirth, indeed, was an influence in determining the final transfer of the estate to Holland-Hibbert. Perhaps diplomatically his own contribution to the Uglow Papers does not address the politics of gallery representation.

BLAST #27 | An online Fin de la Saison

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