Art Market

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, all sold below £1000 including a watercolour of a North African market scene by Hercules Brabazon Brabazon.

In the past, pictures by talented but obscure female artists were given short shrift on the secondary market. Now all that is changing.

Two contrasting marine scenes, encapsulating the unpredictable nature of the sea, were offered at a recent sale at Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium) of Cockermouth in Cumbria.

For most enthusiasts of Airfix’s plastic construction kits, it was the company’s dramatic box artwork that caught the eye when choosing the next model to make.

A standout portrait entry to Essex saleroom Sworders (23% buyer’s premium) was a 4ft 2in x 3ft 4in (1.26 x 1.01m) oil on canvas portrait attributed to Francis Cotes (1726-70).

Wintry scenes by two local artists created a brighter picture at a recent auction in Yorkshire.

Described by one of his biographers as ‘The Last of the Norwich School’, Leonard Squirrell (1893-1979) was an East Anglian man through and through.

A view of a Tyneside street by Spennymoor mining artist Norman Cornish (1919-2014) took £5500 at local auction house Anderson & Garland (20% buyer’s premium).

Among the most iconic works of David Hockney’s (b.1937) output was his Paper Pools series, focusing on the private Californian swimming pools he experienced in the late 1970s.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, all sold below £500.

It’s fair to say the work of Victorian animal painter Sidney Cooper (1803-1902) is not flavour of the month.

“Isn’t it possible that the Irish could be just as brilliant in the visual arts as they have been in music and literature?”

Plenty to interest European buyers was available at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries (17% buyer’s premium) in Maine on August 25-26.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, all sold below £700.

August is the month when Scotland takes it up a notch while the rest of the art world has a breather.

A little-known Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) sculpture of the British actress Sandra Dorne took an estimate-topping £11,000 at HRD Auction Rooms (20% buyer’s premium) on the Isle of Wight.

Just a month after the Second World War, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was in Paris working at the lithography workshop of Fernand Mourlot (1895-1988). It was the beginning of a collaboration that would last almost three decades and produce more than 400 different graphic images and editions.

An Indian School work guided at £100-150 was the star turn at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) of Taunton in Somerset on August 2.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, sold for under £900.

An intriguing portrait by an unidentified hand of a Royal Navy admiral in a wig and blue gilt braided uniform was a star entry at Cotswold saleroom Chorley’s (20/15/12.5/10% buyer’s premium).