Pottery by Waistel Cooper for sale at The Fine Art Society where prices range in the dedicated exhibition from £700-16,000.
More than 50 works by the studio potter are on display at FAS’s London space in Carnaby Street until November 4, with sums ranging from £700 for smaller pots to £16,000 for unique one-off pieces.
This second dedicated exhibition has been sourced from the same private collection as the first, which FAS held at the start of the year.
It was amassed by a Scottish woman who became life-long friends with Cooper after they met in her chip shop in Edinburgh in 1946. Her daughter continued to build the collection, most of which came to the gallery last year comprising over a hundred examples dating from the 1950s through to his final years.
The gallery’s Leah Coley-Fisher told ATG “the latest selection embraces form and design most indicative of mid-century ceramics” and hopes it will follow the success of the first exhibition which “achieved good prices boosted by the strong market for 20th century ceramics”.
Along with notable studio potters Hans Coper and Lucie Rie, the Ayrborn Cooper rejected elaborately decorated Victorian pots in favour of textured, sculptural pieces and pure forms.
For a long time he was regarded as a minor player in the canon of 20th century studio ceramics but prices for his pieces have been on the rise.
Brockhurst and Glock
Portrait of Anais Folin by Gerald Brockhurst – £38,000 in the Fine Art Society's Bevan to Byrne show at the London gallery.
Running concurrently in the London gallery under the title Bevan to Byrne is a show of 30-plus paintings and works on paper by a selection of Modern British artists. Among them are two painters long championed by the gallery: Gerald Brockhurst (1890- 1978) and Gluck (1895-1978).
Seven portrait etchings by Brockhurst are for sale including a 9½ x 7½in (24 x 19cm) graphite on paper depicting the head of Anais Folin, the artist’s wife who sat for many of his early portraits. Showing his prodigious skill as a draughtsman and etcher, it is priced at £38,000.
Like Brockhurst, Gluck is best known for portraits, but she also painted other subjects and the show features two rare watercolour landscapes of Cornwall where she owned a studio until 1947.
Nature lovers
A 10 x 13in (25 x 33cm) signed watercolour by William Hackstoun (1855-1921) available for £3800 in True to Nature at Fine Art Society in Edinburgh.
Meanwhile FAS’s Edinburgh gallery looks at trees and how they are used in Scottish art in True to Nature.
The show, which runs in Dundas Street until November 12, includes nearly 40 etchings, watercolours and oils by artists such as Alexander Nasmyth, Horatio McCulloch, William Hackstoun and John Byrne, and examines the broader meanings and metaphors and how each painter “used trees either as their subject, or as features within a composition”.
