Oil painting

COMMISSIONED in 1908 by the Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Co., Mists of Yellowstone, one of many pictures of what is now the Yellowstone National Park region painted by Thomas Moran, nearly doubled the previous saleroom best for the artist on July 29. It made $4.4m (£2.42m) in the grand ballroom of the Silver Legacy Resort & Casino in Reno, Nevada – where Coeur d’Alene Art hold an annual auction, the big event of the year for well-heeled lovers of Western art.

AN Americana sale held by Eldreds of East Dennis on August 5-6 included a number of works by Ralph Eugene Cahoon Jr. (1910-82), a Cape Cod artist for whom mermaids and sailors, lighthouses and balloons were key themes, and the picture top right, a late addition to the catalogue, proved one of the Massachusetts sale’s greater successes, at $40,000 (£22,000).

NOW that few dealers can any longer afford routinely to buy pictures for stock, auctioneers, particularly provincial auctioneers, have become increasingly reliant on private individuals to take take up the slack at their art sales.

THE recently published, enlarged and revised second edition of Peter McEwan’s indispensable Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture describes the Perthshire-born landscape painter Joseph Henderson (1832-1908) as “one of Scotland’s half-forgotten painters who deserves better recognition than he has hitherto received”.

REGULAR readers of Scott Reyburn’s Art Market will be only too aware that many equestrian paintings by Sir Alfred James Munnings (1878-1959) have in recent years shown significant increases in value. As he reported as recently as Antiques Trade Gazette No 1648, July 17, Munnings’ oil sketch Newmarket Cheveley was the only work to dramatically exceed its estimate in Sotheby’s Important British Picture sale on July 1.

SHIP portraits are, as one might expect, popular with bidders at Eldred’s East Dennis auction galleries on Cape Cod.

THE controversy over whether fox hunting should be banned may rumble on, but, presumably, even the most committed hunt saboteur could not take exception to this intriguing Victorian fantasy painting.

PAINTINGS offered at Lyon & Turnbull’s (17.5% buyer's premium) July 21 Jordantone dispersal were mostly comfortable furnishing pictures of some quality including this uncharacteristic Joseph Farquharson oil, right, entitled Fisherwoman on a Deserted Sandy Beach. Very different from the artist’s trademark mix of sheep, heather and swirling snow, the 22in x 3ft (55x 91cm) image of a solitary figure walking barefoot on the shimmering sand went to a private buyer at £17,000.

THESE two half-length images of women, right, could hardly be more different in date or technique, but their prices proved as uncannily similar as their poses when they came under the hammer at recent fine art auctions.

A LARGE scale oil by Kathleen Hale of Orlando Reclining Amongst Flowers failed to sell against a £10,000-15,000 estimate at Sotheby’s on July 8, but the autograph draft manuscript of Orlando (The Marmalade Cat) becomes a Doctor of 1944, right, each page with pencil and coloured crayon drawings (some with added wash or gouache, a few unfinished) did sell at £5000 to a London gallery.

BASED in Stoke-on-Trent, auctioneers Louis Taylor (buyer’s premium 12.5 per cent) are better known for their ceramics than their pictures but their quarterly Fine sale held from June 14-16 was led by this Dorothea Sharp oil on canvas, right, Children with a Dog on a Summer’s Day.

IT is not often that an antiques dealer ends up on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery, but until September 19 that is just what is happening.

DAVID Teniers the Younger’s whimsical 6 x 8 1/2in (16 x 22cm), oil on copper view of Monkeys Playing Cards, sold to a private buyer against the London trade for a double-estimate €220,000 (£146,665) at Tajan on June 24.

THE National Maritime Museum are asking for help in tracking down two missing paintings by William Hodges. The works The Effects of Peace and The Consequences of War were last seen at a European Museum sale at Christie’s in 1813.

THE Old Master trade loves a sleeper and at least two dealers were convinced they were on to a major discovery when a woefully under-catalogued “Painter standing beside a canvas depicting cupid, oil on canvas, 45 x 37.5in (1.14m x 95cm)” came under the hammer without any form of attribution or estimate at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire rooms of North East Auctions (15/10% buyer’s premium) on May 23.

PICTURES in a May 19 sale held by Doyles of New York included a very large (6ft 4 1/2in x 4ft 1in (1.93 x 125m) oil on panel after Andrea del Sarto's Porta Pinti Madonna.

THE received wisdom of the art market tells us that heavily restored paintings attract little demand from the trade at auction. But sometimes a subject is just too commercial for dealers to pass by, such as this Arthur Wardle (1864-1947) canvas, right, of four terrier puppies, Mischief in Quadruplet, which came up for sale at the Nottingham rooms of Mellors & Kirk (15% buyer’s premium) back on April 23.

WITH the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar beckoning next year, and market-fresh, unrestored marine pictures in ever-dwindling supply, it was hardly surprising to see this exceptionally well-preserved Panorama of Portsmouth Harbour, right, by Thomas Elliott (fl. 1790-1800) inspire intense, multiple-estimate bidding at Christie’s South Kensington’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) May 26 Maritime Sale.

COLLECTORS who love the art of L.S. Lowry but can only afford Helen Bradley (1900-1979) were presented with the picture of their dreams when this 11 by 14in (27 x 36cm) oil, right, of the momentous and inspirational meeting between Lowry and Bradley outside the 1955 Saddleworth Art Group’s Exhibition came up for sale at the Chichester rooms of Henry Adams (15% buyer’s premium) on April 28.

AUCTION history was duly made at Sotheby’s New York on the evening of Wednesday, May 5 when Picasso’s iconic 1905 Rose Period canvas, Garçon à la Pipe, was knocked down for a hammer price of $93m (£54.7m), making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.