A Sea Change by Eileen Agar, £26,000 at Chiswick Auctions.
A couple of works sold at recent auctions underlined the growth in value for Modern British female artists, those that are commercially established at least.
Leading the latest sale of Modern British and Irish Art at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) was a 1958 oil by Eileen Agar (1899-1991) titled A Sea Change. The 2ft 1in x 2ft 8in (63 x 82cm) oil on canvas was bought by the vendor for £900 at Christie’s sale of works from the collection of Lord Sainsbury in 1999.
Since then, the artist’s curatorial and commercial standing has increased considerably, although she has long been a well-known name to followers of British Surrealism.
Agar was the subject of a show at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester in 2008-09 and examples of her work can now be found in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and Tate Modern and the V&A in London.
In terms of her recent auction record, all of the highest prices for her painted works have come in the last two years according to data from Artprice.com, whereas a ceiling of £20,000 had existed for five years prior to that.
A record £65,000 was paid for her 1971 canvas Rite of Spring at Christie’s in 2022.
The artist was famously the only female artist to exhibit at The International Surrealist Exhibition held in London in 1936, but experienced a resurgence of inspiration in the 1950s when she briefly resided in the Canary Islands. A Sea Change is a prime example of Agar’s output during this period and was a rare picture to emerge on the secondary market.
The 2ft 1in x 2ft 8in (63 x 82cm) work at Chiswick’s sale was executed in an inverted method, with the coloured forms probably painted across the entire composition, before being partially covered by aquamarine paint like the cut-outs from a Matisse collage.
Included in the retrospective of the artist’s work held at the Commonwealth Institute in 1971, the picture was also exhibited at the Pallant House 2008-09 show titled Eileen Agar, An Eye for Collage.
Estimated at £20,000-30,000 at the December 12 sale, it attracted decent interest before the gavel fell at £26,000. The price was the 10th highest for Agar at auction but the most ever fetched at a sale outside those at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams. It also represented an eyecatching return for the vendor and demonstrated the way this sector of the market can offer great opportunities for sellers, especially those operating over a timespan of a decade or more.
Estimated at £20,000-30,000 at the December 12 sale, it attracted decent interest before the gavel fell at £26,000.
The price was the 10th highest for Agar at auction but the most ever fetched at a sale outside those at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams. It also represented an eyecatching return for the vendor and demonstrated the way this sector of the market can offer great opportunities for sellers, especially those operating over a timespan of a decade or more.
Wendy and Hook III, a watercolour by Dame Paula Rego, £16,000 at Chiswick Auctions.
Another significant return for a picture bought in the 1990s came for a work on paper by Dame Paula Rego (1935-2022).
Wendy and Hook III was one of her studies inspired by children’s stories, in this case Peter Pan, which Rego illustrated for an edition published by The Folio Society in 1992.
The drawings and watercolours, as well as a set of 15 etchings and aquatints, that she produced focused on the psychological elements of JM Barrie’s book and exemplified the artist’s trademark attention to the complexities beneath the surface within stories. The original works were exhibited at a dedicated show at London’s Marlborough Gallery from December 1992-January 1993 where the example here was purchased by a member of the vendor’s family.
The price paid was probably a fraction of the £15,000-25,000 estimate at the Chiswick sale given the huge increases in the market for Rego’s work since then. A boost came after London’s Tate Britain gallery mounted a major retrospective of her work in 2021, and then the auction record for the Portuguese-British artist was smashed in October last year when a monumental pastel sold at Christie’s for a cool £2.5m.
Selling at £16,000, the price set a benchmark at auction for a work from Rego’s Peter Pan series.
Elegant Armfield
April flowers on the Sill, Llwynhir by Diana Armfield, £4200 at Andrew Smith.
Meanwhile, a strong competition developed at Hampshire saleroom Andrew Smith & Son (23% buyer’s premium) for an elegant still-life by Diana Maxwell Armfield (b.1920).
The artist has had a long and varied career, working as a painter, designer and teacher, but her commercial standing on the secondary market has never been as prominent as many of her contemporaries.
This is partly due to the fact that most of her painted works are small canvases which, in terms of artistic approach, usually followed earlier styles as she was influenced by artists such as Pierre Bonnard and Walter Sickert.
Before turning to painting full time in 1965, she worked as a designer and ran the textiles and wallpaper partnership Armfield-Passano (the firm displayed a number of designs at the 1951 Festival of Britain).
Examples of her fabrics and furnishings can now be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection.
Although a member of a number artistic groups and societies, and exhibiting at well-established dealers such as Browse & Darby, it was not until 1991 when she was in her 70s that she was elected to the Royal Academy.
The work at the Alresford auction on December 12-13 was one of those she exhibited at the RA Summer Exhibition that same year. Titled April flowers on the sill, Llwynhir, the 11 x 8in (28 x 21cm) oil on board was signed with initials and was painted in north Wales, where she and her husband and fellow RA Bernard Dunstan had a cottage.
A number of still-lifes by Armfield attracted decent interest in 2023. One made a top-estimate £3000 at Dreweatts in January last year, which was followed by another going over predictions at Bellmans in May at £2200.
The painting at Andrew Smith drew the best contest of the lot.
Pitched at £300-500, it attracted several bidders and was eventually knocked down at £4200. The sum was the second highest for the artist at auction, standing only behind a painting of a cat sold for £5500 at Sotheby’s in 2007.
