The signed 9 x 14in (23 x 36cm) charcoal drawing of a voluptuous reclining nude went under the hammer at The Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on June 6.
It had been consigned by a lady whose late husband, a London GP, received the drawing from a grateful patient on his retirement in 1976. Estimated at £1000-1500, it was bought by a London buyer for £4500.
Elsewhere among the works on paper was a signed 18 x 13in (46 x 33cm) drypoint etching by society portraitist Paul Cesar Helleu (1859-1927) of Consuelo Vanderbilt (1877-1964) as the La Duchesse de Marlborough .
Vanderbilt, who married Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke, is sketched wearing a large feather-trimmed hat. Around 25 copies of this well-known print have sold at auction over the last 30 years according to the Art Sales Index, typically selling in the low four figures.
This example, which had passed through London dealer Richard Green, was bought by an American gallery for £2900 against a conservative guide of £900-1200.
The picture section was led by the catalogue cover lot: an oil painting of a young Dutch girl by the famed Scottish coastal landscape artist Robert Gemmell Hutchinson (1855-1936). Titled By the Zuider Zee, it had formerly been in the private collection of Glasgow art lover WB Sumpton, and sold to a Scottish phone bidder on bottom estimate at £9000.
