Fine Art

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

In what could well be a first, all 10 of Christie’s top evening sale lots on June 17 were sculptures. The group comprised the works of four blue-chip sculptors – Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink and Barry Flanagan – and contributed much of the overall total at £11.3m.

A Cricket Match (1938) by Mod Brit giant LS Lowry (1887-1976) was the fitting headliner at Sotheby’s. Offered in the midst of the Cricket World Cup, the 18in x 2ft (46 x 61cm) oil on canvas showing a back-street match played by local children in Salford sold for a mid-estimate £950,000 to a UK private buyer.

Much of the pre-sale publicity from Bonhams’ June 15 Mod Brit focused on Eric Gill’s (1882-1942) Girl with a Comb in her Hair (1928) – a market-fresh carved head and torso valued at £200,000-300,000 and admired for its unusual pose and luxuriant wavy hair.

Works produced in the 1940s by Al Hirschfeld figured prominently among the higher priced lots at a June 4 Illustration Art sale held in New York.

Abbott and Holder offers this 1940 oil on canvas of Regents Canal, Paddington, as part of a large, single-owner collection on offer in the Bloomsbury gallery.

'La Biennale Paris' and 'Parcours des Mondes' bring the dealing scene in the French capital back to life after summer slumbers, while auction houses also rise to the occasion. We take an early glimpse at what will be on offer for the visitor in September.

The painting dubbed the ‘Toulouse Caravaggio’ that was snubbed by the Louvre in Paris could now go on show in a museum after a private sale.

A study for the mysterious painting 'Allegory' by Thomas Monnington (1902-76) features in Liss Llewellyn’s exhibition of religious art in 20th century Britain. It shows a nude man and woman before a tree, an overt visual reference to Adam and Eve, but one which the artist denied.

Views of Venice figure prominently in a collection of 42 Old Master drawings from the 18th century, being sold by Metz in Heidelberg on July 20.

An Edward Seago painting, The Thames at Henley, is among the highlights at the annual summer sale held at Thomson’s Gallery in Aldeburgh.

Percy Kelly (1918-93) was so averse to the limelight that only a few of his paintings were ever shown publicly during his life. But a major retrospective in 2015 and a birth centenary last year has helped raise the Cumbrian artist’s profile – and his prices.

Emily Walsh is managing director of The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh, which deals in Scottish art from 1650 to the present.

Tentatively guided at £200-400, this watercolour of an unknown sitter below attributed to the painter and sculptor Glyn Philpot (1884-1937) attracted multiple bids in Cardiff.

Miners heading to work in the early morning with lit lamps, denizens of northern pubs with flat caps and pipes, women pushing prams or hanging up the washing: these figures populate the works of Norman Cornish (1919-2014), the ‘pitman painter’.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales at £1300 or under, including Grosvenor School linocut by Edith Lawrence.

In the spring of 1940, Eric Ravilious (1903-42) spent three weeks in Grimsby during his role as a war artist.