Prints

ALEXANDER Walker, who died last year at the age of 73, was the film critic of London’s Evening Standard for more than 40 years and among the well-known names in the film world. Not so well known is that he was a noted collector of modern art.

UNLIKE the market for oil paintings, where traditional images appear to be going through something of a mini-revival, print auctions show signs of being a sector where the critical mass of demand has shifted permanently towards Modern and Contemporary.

AFTER 19 years, The London Original Print Fair is still the only event of its kind in Europe and it goes from strength to strength, as you will see when it runs this week from April 22 to 25 at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.

WHILE print devotees will be flocking to The London Original Print Fair (April 22-25) this week at the Royal Academy’s new space in Burlington Gardens, off Old Bond Street, it should not be forgotten that there are currently a number of other events celebrating the printmaker’s craft.

A PORTRAIT of two of the ‘Scottsboro Boys’, illustrated right, topped this year’s sale of African-Americana at Swann’s when it was knocked down at $36,000 (£19,080). But there was also a bid of $20,000 (£10,600) on a group of 40 letters and telegrams addressed to Dickenson, Hill & Co. and S.R. Fondren, slave dealers of Richmond, Virginia, in the years 1836-62.

ONE of London’s most concentrated areas for art dealing, St. James’s, SW1, has a new gallery specialising in fine antique prints – Isaac and Ede at 1 Duke of York Street (Tel: 020 7925 1177).

FAMOUS since the 16th century for its boys’ school, the small Rutland market town of Uppingham can also brag about being the home of the Goldmark Gallery. With a secondhand book department, this very amiable and innovative gallery always has much to delight, particularly in the field of 20th century prints.

ALTHOUGH the London Original Print Fair has finished its four-day run on April 27, there remain a number of enticing events for print aficionados.

Dismissed by some as the equivalent of Clarice Cliff, the brilliantly coloured, Vorticist-influenced linocuts produced by the Grosvenor School during the inter-war years continue to be the most hotly contested commodity at UK print auctions, particularly when they emerge from long-established private collections.

The Gart der Gesundheit is one of the giants in the field. The most important herbal of the 15th century, it contained the finest illustrations of the incunable period and was unsurpassed until the appearance of the first edition of the Brunfels herbal in 1530.

Interior decorators may well be familiar with the work of ARC prints, the Battersea firm based at 1-6 Andrew Place, SW8.Their high quality reproductions of antique engravings of Piranesi vases, Roman architectural studies and David Roberts Middle Eastern landscapes can be seen on the walls of many an antique shop or stand as well as providing a stylish focal point to domestic interiors.

The Impressionist and Modern sales were not the only New York sales last week to smash auction records. Christie’s November 5-6 sale of 19th and 20th century prints brought an extraordinary record price for a single print by Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. La Grande Loge, an 1897 lithograph in colours on wove paper, was an extremely rare and previously unrecorded colour trial proof produced before an edition of 12.

Bligh relics sold as part of the Travel Week at Christie’s, attracted national media headlines, but the most successful of this series of four sales was the Freycinet Collection, which on September 26 raised a premium-inclusive total of £1.57m.

AFTER a closure of some 18 months to sort out some little problems with the lease, Mayfair's Shapero Gallery, which specialises in antique prints, photographs, maps and watercolours, reopens this week at 24 Bruton Street, W1 with a show called simply Cities.

CONDITION is a prime concern in the 20th century print market but occasionally images come on the market that are so rare and so striking that condition concerns take a lower priority – particularly if the buyer has been searching for such a piece for 30 years.

Sotheby’s Olympia clinched the week’s loftiest price for an Asian work when a mighty £480,000 was placed by a Japanese telephone buyer probably bidding against the reserve for a complete set of Ando Hiroshige’s (1797-1858) 120 woodblock prints: The One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

THE dust is finally starting to settle in the newly merged Bonhams (17.5% buyer’s premium). Those who lost their jobs have long since gone, departments have been reshuffled and on March 27 the last print sale was held at the Chelsea salerooms.

Though not so credited, this coloured lithograph, Grand Prix de l’A.C.F. 1913 (Motocyclettes) has a very Gamy/Montaut look about it. In the literature section of a motoring sale held by Bonhams at the RAF Museum, Hendon, on February 25, it sold at £250.

Buying art as an investment has always been a perilous business. Back in the 1920s during the so-called Etching Boom speculating collectors were prepared to pay hundreds of pounds – ie more than the price of an average London house – for single prints by ultra- fashionable artists such as Muirhead Bone, David Young Cameron and James McBey.

IN 1954 the painter and printmaker, Philip Reeves (born 1931), being interviewed for a post as a lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art, produced a letter of reference from the artist Robert Austin (1895-1973).