Titled Shrimp leading ponies across a Norfolk Common, the 14 x 191/2in (36 x 50cm) preparatory study, purchased by an anonymous bidder, had remained in the same Sussex family since it was painted in 1911. The oil of the same title is in the collection of the Sir Alfred Munnings Museum in Dedham, Essex.
There was further excitement at the sale when a previously unknown watercolour by the Victorian artist Myles Birkett Foster RWS (1825-99) went under the hammer. Discovered behind the drawer lining of a chest of drawers bought in a secondhand shop, the 51/2 x 4in (14 x 10cm) watercolour had been identified after the owner took it for valuation at Sotheby’s Chester.
Depicting a family looking over a low wall out towards the sea on the Italian coast, the picture is thought to date from Foster’s European travels in the 1850s and 60s. In the event it took £5000 against an estimate of £1500-2000.
Munnings preparatory sketch makes £62,000
UK: SIR Alfred James Munnings proved as great a magnet as ever at Sotheby’s South’s Billingshurst rooms on July 18 when a watercolour sketch for one of his oil paintings fetched a hammer price of £62,000, more than double the low estimate.
