The collection was assembled by the late Keith Allison (1925-2016), who founded the firm of London solicitors Allison and Humphries with his colleague Charles Humphries.
He bought many of his pictures in the 1970s and ‘80s and, having later retired to the Wylye Valley in Wiltshire, he met W&W chairman Paul Viney after asking the auctioneers to carry out an insurance valuation around 20 years ago.
With the works consigned by Allison’s estate to the sale today (June 7), all bar one of the 16 lots from the collection sold, with two lots in particular standing out.
One was Sunbathers by Keith Vaughan (1912-77) which overshot a £30,000-50,000 estimate and was knocked down at £120,000 to lead the lots from the consignment.
The 20in x 2ft 6in (50 x 76cm) oil on canvas dated from 1948, a period where the artist began to use figures in his work and, stylistically, develop his technique after being influenced by the likes of Swiss-German painter Paul Klee (1879-1940). While examples of Vaughan’s 1950s works have made more, the sum fetched was among the strongest for a picture from his period.
Tropical Fruits
The other leading lot from the Allison collection was Tropical Fruits by John Minton (1917-57). The 3ft 4in x 4ft 2in (1.01 x 1.27m) oil on canvas was one of the pictures that relate to the artist’s trip to Jamaica in the summer of 1950 – Vaughan produced watercolours depicting life on the island in situ and then used them as the basis for a series of oil paintings that he made back in his north London studio.
‘Tropical Fruits’ by John Minton – £85,000 at Woolley & Wallis.
Signed and dated 1951, the rich colours, exotic lighting and large size of the canvas made it an attractive proposition in the saleroom. With these subjects becoming the most sought-after in the artist’s oeuvre, the £40,000-60,000 estimate looked attractive in light of two other Jamaican paintings from 1951 setting the highest auction prices ever fetched for Minton in London last year.
Here, Tropical Fruits drew competition over the top end of its estimate before two phone bidders took it to a final £85,000.
The price followed two of Minton’s Jamaican watercolours also both selling over estimate, making £9000 and £7000 respectively.
Elsewhere in the Allison collection, a Christopher Wood (1901-30) oil on board of a Mediterranean scene fetched a mid-estimate £20,000, while a Paul Nash (1889-1946) watercolour over pencil titled Derrick at Orford doubled its top estimate at £14,000.
The buyer’s premium at Woolley & Wallis was 22%.
