Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood

Essay warns about considerable perils of the ‘indecent custom’ of burials in churchyards

A First World War medal fashioned from a Mexican eight reales coin was an unusual feature of a group sold at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) on February 19.

With the UK auction calendar yet to undergo significant changes and cancellations due to the coronavirus outbreak, many sales took place last week. Here are three highlights from around the country.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including a Walter Greaves Thames scene.

With an Irish silver ‘seal salver’ gleaming at the first Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) sale of the year (ATG No 2427), Italy, China and Russia provided other highlights.

This 18th century English provincial school full-length portrait depicts the jester Black John. He was in the employ of the famously eccentric John Arscott (1718-88) of the Tetcott estate in Devon, said to be the last man in England to keep a professional jester.

On the death of the monarch, or when a statesman left office, it was required by law that any seals of royal authority be broken and defaced.

A bid of £5000 from a Contemporary art gallery in London secured this post-war portrait by the writer and Vorticist painter Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957).

A flurry of bids emerged for this late-17th century canine study at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter (23% buyer’s premium).

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including a Stanley Spencer sketch.

Bearing a modest estimate of £50-75 but sold instead at £800 by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) on September 4 was a copy of 'Women’s Suffrage: a Short History of a Great Movement' (1912) by that renowned campaigner for women’s political rights, Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

The second published work of the ‘flower book lady’ has no other auction appearance

A pocket globe with some areas still a mystery leads a maritime auction at Exeter saleroom Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.

A clutch of 19th and 20th century marine and maritime pictures attracted competitive bidding in summer sales held at three auction houses in southern England.

Topped by an eight-times estimate £19,500 Momoyama ‘Namban’ cabinet (ATG No 2391), Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood’s (21% buyer’s premium) sale in Exeter on April 16 had other estimate-busting lots from abroad.

While dedicated sales of English and Continental ceramics are rarer beasts in the saleroom calendar these days, the traditional mixed-discipline regional sales are a repository for plenty of material from the main factories of the 18th and 19th centuries.