The items range across different collecting categories and will feature in nine separate auctions in both London and Hong Kong over the next four months. They include Modern British pictures, Irish art, Regency furniture, antiquarian books, photographs of polar expeditions, Tibetan figures and even contemporary Chinese paintings.
“I knew the owners of this collection well, and remember the warm and civilised atmosphere of their house,” said Philip Hook, Sotheby’s senior international specialist.
“They were in the art world, and as such they bought works with an insider’s knowledge as well as with natural good taste.”
Two of the most valuable lots will both feature at Sotheby’s sale of Modern & Post-War British Art sale in London on November 21-22 – a snow scene by Harold Gilman (1876-1919) and a view of New York by C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946).
Gilman’s oil on canvas A London Scene in Snow from 1917-18 is a vintage Camden Town Group picture and has an estimate of £150,000-250,000.
Nevinson’s Looking down on Downtown, an oil on canvas from 1920, dates from his first visit to New York and carries a £100,000-150,000 estimate at the same sale.
Other pictures from the collection include a classic autumnal scene by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) which will be offered at Sotheby’s Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite and British Impressionist Art on December 14 (estimate: £120,000-180,000), and a watercolour by contemporary Chinese artist Xu Lei titled Shattered Illusion (estimate: HKD120,000-180,000 / £50,000-80,000) which will feature in the ‘Contemporary Ink Art’ sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on October 2.
