Receipts offered with the pair showed they had been acquired by the vendor from an English gallery in the early 1990s for a combined £110,000. On January 10 at Stroud Auctions (15% buyer’s premium), their total came to £20,000.
It shows not only this decline in demand, but also the hefty mark-ups put on some pictures at the time. According to Art Sales Index, the highest auction price in 1995 paid for a single picture by Percy appears to have been around £40,000.
Despite today’s soft market for Victorian landscapists such as Percy, the auction house generated good competition for the more impressive of the duo, a 23in x 3ft 1in (59 x 94cm) oil on canvas of Loch Lomond in southern Scotland.
It was estimated at £6000-12,000 and sold to a private buyer in Dundee for £15,000.
The other oil, similar in size but of an unknown mountainous location, sold on bottom estimate to another private buyer at £5000.
