BLAST #32
May/June 2026
Salerooms
In September 2010, a large monochromatic abstract painting, Untitled (Green), by up-and-coming young artist Zebedee Jones – promoted by Karsten Schubert and Waddington Galleries (which had been designed by Jones’s architect father, Chester Jones) – made an appearance at Christie’s and sold above estimate for £6,250. At the time, it was expected that Jones would go on to greater things, and prices, but for various reasons that didn’t happen. Soon after, he turned away from abstraction. The extent to which Jones fell out of fashion was underlined at Sworders on 10 March when Untitled (Green) and a companion piece by him were hammered down for just £240.
Zebedee Jones (British, b.1970), Untitled (green), 1998 and Untitled, 2003, the first signed 'Zebedee Jones' verso, oil on canvas; the latter signed twice, inscribed, and dated 2003 verso, oil on linen laid on board (2), 214 x 153cm; unframed and 216 x 156cm; unframed. Sold for £240
SIR CEDRIC LOCKWOOD MORRIS (BRITISH 1889-1982), PAYSAGE DU JARDIN No.2, 1931, signed and dated (lower left), oil on canvas. 71.2cm x 63.6cm (28in x 25in). Sold for £227,000 by Lyon & Turnbull in London on Fri 01 May 2026
Eagle-eyed catalogue readers, like myself, are always on the lookout for new sources of expertise which the salerooms, in their ingenuity, are constantly unearthing. Browsing the Lyon & Turnbull catalogue of 1 May my eye was caught by the description of an early Cedric Morris flower painting as ‘Featuring a mix of cottage garden plants and rare exotics, it also includes short-lived flamboyant bursts of colour like the sunflowers. The Himalayan Lily with green seedpods at the right of centre is accompanied by Hollyhocks, Chicory, Lords and Ladies, Cornflowers, Foxgloves, Lupins, Onions and others, whose flower heads, petals, stems, natural colours and textures are brought together in a triumph of powerful abundance.’ All of which must have contributed to the £227,000 price over the £60,000 estimate. The credit under the catalogue note, which I had never seen before, goes to David R. Mitchell, Curator, Muddy Feet Consulting, an Environmental advisory group.
In the same sale was a painting by an artist whom BLAST has had cause to mention many times – the British surrealist, Tristram Hillier. Hillier’s Fallen Elm 1979 had been bought for £24,000 (£20,000-30,000 estimate) in 2006. Twenty years later at Lyon & Turnbull it had the same estimate and a catalogue entry advised by the artist’s estate in which it is described as highlighting ‘his restrained and atmospheric approach to Surrealism, combining technical precision with a quiet sense of unease…/ Hillier’s Surrealism,’ it continues, ‘functions through suggestion rather than distortion, using unexpected juxtapositions and precise detail to evoke an idea of tension. The fallen tree may symbolise decay, loss, or aftermath, while the distant building, axe and clothes hints at a human presence without actually painting a figure in. Through a controlled use of colour and detail, Hillier constructs a contemplative yet unsettling image that reflects the Surrealist fascination with mystery, absence, and the unconscious.’ All of which added up to a double estimate of £53,120.
Gerard Dillon - Lot 10. Sold for €1,375,000 including buyer’s premium. Image Courtesy of Adam’s Auctioneers
Of the 641 works by self-taught Irish painter Gerard Dillon sold at auction since the late 1980s, only ten have hit six figures. Back in November 1993, one of his better paintings, Tea Party, 1955, a colourful interior with six people seated around a table turning towards the painter as if he were a photographer, sold just within estimate for £12,650. It wasn’t until the Celtic Tiger was in full swing in 2006 that he hit the six-figure mark. The Irish market has experienced several peaks and troughs since then, the latest peak being on 27 May this year when Tea Party returned to the rostrum, this time at Adams Auctioneers in Dublin, where it flew above its E150,000 estimate to sell for E1.375 million to an online bidder.
On 2 June, another significant record was set at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury when a highly coloured 30-inch square painting, St. Katherine’s Precinct, Regent’s Park, April 1979/80, by the distinctive landscape painter Adrian Berg (1929-2011) soared 15 times above estimate to sell for £31,700. The price was six times more than Berg’s previous record of £5,500 set at Roseberys in March 2026 for a smaller view of Regent’s Park. Some credit for Berg’s posthumous price revolution must lie with the Frestonian Gallery in West London, which has mounted several shows for Berg recently, including a solo stand at Frieze Masters and his first museum retrospective in Asia staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Hiroshima. ‘A similar-sized painting would be priced between £60,000 and £80,000 depending on quality’, said gallery partner Rollo Campbell. So, the record was quite a bargain.
Adrian Berg (1929-2011) , St. Katherine’s Precinct, Regent’s Park, April, 1979/80. Image Courtesy Woolley & Wallis. Sold for £31,700
Galleries
A sad announcement for frequenters of the British Museum who have enjoyed popping into Austin/ Desmond Fine Art just opposite for nearly 40 years – owner John Austin has decided to draw in his horns and close the gallery, thus relieving him of the need to constantly fund the overheads involved. Austin Desmond, though, is not closing for business. The company, which he started with the highly charged William Desmond in a stable yard in Ascot in 1979, will still be doing business and will be present at the Saatchi Gallery this October for the British Art Fair, which Austin Desmond helped to originate as the 20th Century British Art Fair in 1988.
Lynn Chadwick, Sitting Figures on Stripes II, 1972, Lithograph, 56 x 76 cm. A/P from an edition of 100. Courtesy Pangolin London.
Lynn Chadwick’s sculptures, currently on view at Houghton Hall are available to buy from Pangolin London (which curated the exhibition) priced from £600,000 to £3 million. As this could be out of most people’s reach, Pangolin London is staging an exhibition of Chadwick’s prints in its King’s Cross gallery from 16 June-5 July. Chadwick made sixty-eight lithographs and screenprints which are all printed in the catalogue raisonné. A number of these prints are now extremely rare, says the gallery, so not all prints included in the exhibition will be available for sale. Those that are will be priced from between £960 and £2,950 inclusive of VAT. The most expensive framed print is the 1972 lithograph, Sitting Figures on Stripes II, an artist’s proof from an edition of one hundred. The highest price for a Chadwick print at auction, according to Artnet, is £6,750 (ten times the estimate) realised in Christie’s online sale of the Vanthournout collection in March this year of a dedicated lithograph of two seated figures, 1972, thought also to be an artist’s proof aside from the edition of one hundred.
Elizabeth Blackadder (1931-2021), Still Life with Bead Bracelet, 1974, signed and dated, oil on canvas, 102 x 127 cm. Courtesy Jenna Burlingham Gallery
Hampshire dealer, Jenna Burlingham, was in sprightly mood at the opening of The Decorative Fair in Battersea this May when she revealed to me that she would be working with the estate of the highly popular Scottish artist Elizabeth Blackadder (1931-2021). Her first exhibition, ‘Quiet Observations’, running until 4 July, would focus less on Blackadder’s popular images of flowers and cats, she said, but revolve around her early work from 1955 to 1975 – oils and works on paper of landscapes and interiors that are less obviously decorative than her more mature work, and priced from £7,000 to £35,000.
Blackadder, meanwhile, is also the focus of an exhibition at the Edinburgh weavers, Dovecote Studios, who have produced a new rug after The Red Bouquet, 1975, marking the sixty years since the artist first collaborated with weavers to make tapestries of her paintings. The Red Bouquet, with its generous spaces between objects that float magically within the composition, demonstrates how Blackadder was able to pursue such a longstanding and successful relationship with Dovecote, giving its weavers plenty of room to express themselves and their craft. Blackadder made fifteen rugs and thirty-one tapestries with Dovecote during her life. Several other tapestries will be included in the exhibition, ‘Elizabeth Blackadder: A Life in Colour’, which opens from 20 June to 14 November as part of the Royal Scottish Academy's milestone 200th anniversary year, honouring the artist as the first woman elected to both the RSA and the Royal Academy of Arts. The exhibition includes prints ranging from £1,850 to £4,000; watercolours from £5,500 to £18,500; paintings from £6,500 to £45,000, as well as The Red Bouquet rug at £12,000, and tapestries from £45,000 to £55,000.