Sotheby’s and Christie’s decisions to hold autumnal Modern British sales cheek by jowl with the international modern and contemporary art sales that constitute Frieze week was no doubt intended to raise the profile of the British market. But they were only part of a much greater focus provided by the high level of Modern British art content in Peter Simon’s Monsoon collection and the larger than ever presence of Modern British dealers at Frieze Masters. Not only that, but Phillips, which abandoned Modern British years ago in favour the ultra-contemporary, found itself dealing with an unusual supply of Modern British consignments.
Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), The Hands and the Arm, 1948, oil and pencil on board, 30.5 x 38 cm. CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2026
During Simon’s early collecting period, between 1995 and 1999, his advisor, dealer Ivor Braka steered him towards Modern British. So the sales, while led by international stars like Miro, Mondrian and de Kooning, were peppered with works by Ben Nicholson, Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash, Peter Lanyon, Alfred Wallis and Ivon Hitchens.
One of these was an oil and crayon painting of a surgeon’s hands by Barbara Hepworth from her hospital series in 1948 which had been bought by Braka in 1994 for £22,425 and sold on to Simon two years later after a confidence boosting record £230,000 had been paid at auction for a different surgeon painting. Thirty years later Simon’s example sold for £537,600 – a new record for a Hepworth painting. There was only one Hepworth sculpture in the sale, Torso, an early 1929 figurative wood carving which was bought by dealer Daniel Katz within estimate for £396,800.
David Bomberg (1890-1957), San Miguel, Toledo, Afternoon, 1929. oil on canvas, 71.1 x 70.5 cm. CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2026
Katz has always been in the market for exceptional works by David Bomberg and Simon had a 28-inch square thickly encrusted view of San Miguel, Toledo, Afternoon, 1929, which Braka had originally bought for art insurer Robert Hiscox in 1987 for £71,500. Hiscox only exhibited it once, in the loan collection for the 20th century British Art Fair in 1995 which I organised. Hiscox then sold it in 1998 for £161,000 back to Braka on behalf of Peter Simon. Bomberg’s status has since risen in line with his students, Auerbach and Kossoff, and the painting was reoffered again in the Monsoon sale, selling this time to Katz for a record £3.3 million reaping an annualised gain or Capital Growth Rate of 10.5% for Simon (according to Art Tactic’s report on resold lots).
Amongst the contemporary British artists there was a record £5.2 million for the 8 ½ foot wide Streak 2, 1979, by Bridget Riley and a strong £4.6 million price for Hurvin Anderson whose jungle like landscape, Lost House, was bought from Thomas Dane (Simon’s favoured source on the primary market) the year it was painted (2013) when, thanks to competition between Simon and Charles Saatchi, Anderson’s paintings had reached the £300,000 mark at auction.
In the second part of the Monsoon sale, there was an abundance of Modern British material from which he reaped handsome gains. One of the better results was for a 1928 Christopher Wood painting of a Farm Near St.Ives that was estimated at £60,000 but sold for £287,600. The buyer, a private collector, told me he was happy to pay that price as he already had four Woods at home (presumably now a touch more valuable than they were before the sale).
Christopher Wood (1901-1930), Farm Near St Ives, 1928, oil on canvas, 24.5 x 41.5 cm. CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2026
A painting of Mushrooms on a Plate, 1929, by Sir William Nicholson which Simon bought in 1996 for £35,000 sold for £243,200. A 1921 drawing of the poet, Robert Graves, by Eric Kennington, for which he paid a multi estimate record £34,500 now had a stronger £20,000 estimate and set a new £70,400 record for a Kennington drawing. A drawing of Dorelia by Augustus John which cost £8,300 in 1997, sold for £64,000. Occasionally Simon slipped up. A 1938 portrait of a semi-clad woman, The Red Shawl, by Mark Gertler which he bought in 1998 from the Hiscox collection for £42,700, dropped a couple of notches to sell for £33,250
Eric Kennington (1888-1960), Portrait of Robert Graves, 1921, charcoal and chalk on grey paper, 47.6 × 32 cm. Sold for £70, 400. CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2026
Augusts John, O.M., R.A. (1878-1961), Portrait of Dorelia, circa 1905, charcoal on paper, 33 x 25.4 cm. Sold for £64,000. CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2026
Grayson Perry (b. 1960), Barbaric Splendour, 2003, glazen earthenware, in two parts, 67 x 35 x 35 cm. Sold for £66,560. Image courtesy Sotheby’s.
Sotheby’s response was a comparatively low voltage £46 million Modern and Contemporary Art sale which was marked by a huge record £704,000 for a tiny work on paper, Butterfly Fish 1978, by Michael Andrews that had been estimated at £80,000, and the rare sight of unsold works by Banksy, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Jade Fadojutimi.
At Sotheby’s day sale, several British artists who had enjoyed the patronage of Charles Saatchi experienced declining values for their work. Glenn Brown’s early homage to Frank Auerbach We’ll Drink Through it All; This Modern Age,1993, which had cost £145,200 in 2009, had no takers at £70,000. Michael Raedecker’s early (1998) acrylic and thread painting, Action, had last sold as part of the rated collection of Kenneth L Freed for $53,715 in 2003, just before the artist’s secondary market experienced a mini boom (up to £148,000 in 2007). But those days are long gone. Now estimated at just £5,000 to 7,000 Action seemed to sell well enough for £15,360, but a long way off cost. Likewise, a classic Grayson Perry pot Barbaric Splendour, 2003, that sold eight years ago for a double estimate £224,750, was now estimated at just £30,000 to £50,000 and, while seeming to sell well enough for £66,560, was again well below cost.
The Frieze week sales ended at Phillips where they had started, with Modern British. A collection of 22 lots by Ben Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Winifred Nicholson and others from Dartington Hall in Devon with an estimated value between £750,000 and £1 million, was withdrawn after a last-minute offer by an association of west country museums, including Tate St Ives, the Box in Plymouth and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery in Exeter was accepted for a bargain £815,000.
A second collection at Phillips was billed simply as ‘A Prestigious British Collection’ which we deduce as belonging to the ginger haired, bespectacled radio disc jockey, Chris Evans. We had spotted Evans in the auction rooms ten years ago buying Modern British art and were surprised to see him send them to Phillips which abandoned specialised Modern British sales in the current century to concentrate on international contemporary.
Having devoted their Berkeley Square galleries to turn of the century art from Newlyn this summer, we anticipate a greater emphasis on Modern British at Phillips. Best returns for Evans came via David Hockney. Deck Gate, 2000, a drawing of the artist’s garden in LA, had cost him £33,650 in 2009 and returned £154,500.
Patrick Heron, Red Painting with Emerald Disc: October 1961, signed, titled and dated ‘Patrick Heron RED PAINTING WITH EMERALD DISC: OCT 1961’ on the reverse, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 152.5 cm. Sold for £129,000. Image Courtesy of Phillips
A 1975 drawing of restauranteur Peter Langan and a friend, bought at the 2012 sale of the Langan collection for £97,250 returned £232,000, and a 2003 watercolour of a Red Leather Chair, which had been bought for a triple estimate £259,875 in 2013, returned £645,000. But other works by William Scott, Patrick Heron and Terry Frost sold either on or below estimates some for less than their cost. Patrick Heron’s Red Painting with Emerald Disc: October 1961, for instance, was bought in 2013 above its £80,000 estimate for £134,500 but sold below its new heightened estimate for £119,000.
Next issue – Sotheby’s and Christie’s specialised Modern British sales straddle Frieze week. My thanks to Artnet for use of their auction data base.