The morning's highly successful £2.5m sale of Modern British material was always going to be a hard act to follow. Victorian and Edwardian art is a much more selective area and, of the 85 lots that were offered in the afternoon session, 30 failed to find buyers.
A number of these carried substantial estimates, such as Sir Alfred James Munnings' The Grey Pony (£150,000-200,000) and Henry Herbert La Thangue's Dawn (£80,000-120,000). As a result, the final premium-inclusive total of £921,840 was some way below the pre-sale forecast of £1.2m-1.7m. Sotheby's had made every effort to include plenty of accessible, decorative paintings in the sale, none more so than this signed Dorothea Sharp (1874-1955) canvas, right. Entitled By the Blue Sea, and measuring 2ft 1in x 2ft 4in (64 x 76cm), it was estimated at £25,000-30,000, and led the sale with a bid of £57,000 from the London dealers MacConnal-Mason.
