The three – Assembling Parts, Banking at 4000 Feet and Swooping Down on a Taube – bettered their cautious guides to sell for a combined £11,200 on May 17.
The most expensive was Nevinson’s well-known dynamic print Banking at 4000 Feet, which sold for £5200 to a collector in California, while a London dealer secured the other two.
Estimated at £700-1000 each, the three 20 x 15in (51 x 38cm) lithographs belong to Nevinson’s Building Aircraft, a set of six prints published in 1918 as part of the series The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals.
Crucially, these were produced in a group of 100 unsigned impressions on un-hallmarked paper, which make them less desirable to collectors than the larger edition of 200 signed prints.
A number of signed prints have gone onto fetch much higher prices on the secondary market, including a record £95,000 print at Sotheby’s in 2012 for Banking at 4000 Feet.
