The 16in x 2ft 6in (41 x 76cm) oil on canvas from 1928 overshot a £30,000-50,000 estimate and was knocked down at £80,000. The sum represented the second-highest auction price for the artist, only behind City of London From Hampstead which also sold at Bonhams back in June 2015 for £105,000.
Sunset, Hove contained some of Newton’s trademark features such as the urban subject, architectural details, long shadows and serene evening light. However, it also contained more figures than usual and, in fact, was among the Hampstead-born artist’s most populated canvases.
The location of the Hove promenade, just along the coast from Brighton, is a familiar location to the many visitors of sea-side town and gave it obvious commercial appeal. The artist also made a pencil sketch for the work on headed paper from the Queen's Hotel Brighton which is now in the collection of the Tate gallery.
Self portrait by David Jagger – 180,000 at Bonhams.
Elsewhere in the sale, a striking self portrait by David Jagger (1891-1958) from 1928 demolished a £20,000-30,000 estimate to sell for a record £180,000.
The 16 x 12in (41 x 31cm) oil on board had been bought by the vendor from William Yeo in Hampshire in 1986. It also featured another work by Jagger on the verso.
One of the artist’s small number of intimately observed portraits where he experimented with chiaroscuro effects set against a black background in his Chelsea studio, it was the kind of work that has recently shot up in value.
An earlier work by Jagger from 1917, also thought to be a self portrait, titled The Conscientious Objector set a major record at Bonhams back in November 2015, selling at £94,000, reportedly after a competition between dealers Phillip Mould and Daniel Katz. It would appear that price has brought further works by Jagger to the market, and the current Bonhams sale offer three pictures, two of which sold.
The art critic Bernard James Valentine Carr described Jagger’s portraits works as follows: “The fact of the dark background and of cutting the portrait off at the chin is to make the shape of the head, the lineaments of the features, and the general characteristics of the subject stand out with unusual force.”
John Armstrong in demand
Strong competition also came for John Armstrong's (1893-1973) On the Promenade, a 16.25 x 14in (41 x 33.5cm) tempera on board from 1947. It overshot a £5000-7000 estimate and was knocked down at £32,000.
It dated from the period shortly after the Second World War, which is regarded as when Armstrong produced some of his most original works, and was an example of the artist’s surreal compositions focusing on the natural environment with wavy foliage typically painted in crisp detail.
Making a sum which stands in the top 10 auction prices for Armstrong, it demonstrated the way demand and appreciation has grown over recent times.
‘On the Promenade’ by John Armstrong – £32,000 at Bonhams.
The market for the artist has ebbed and flowed over the years and, while his current prices may lag well behind some of better-known contemporaries, things began to change in around 2010 and a record £60,000 was set for a study for a poster sold at Sotheby’s in April 2014.
