British art sales draw a crowd ready to spend (and possibly break records)

London’s modern British art sales rung up a fairly healthy ￡46 million last week, but paled in comparison with New York’s equivalent, which had amassed $220 million (￡171 million) a week earlier when one painting by Edward Hopper sold for $92 million.

There were signs of American interest in British art when Bonhams offered an early Henry Moore alabaster carving, resembling an ancient Mexican death mask, which doubled estimates to sell for ￡3.2 million. Among the bidders was a London dealer who is known to buy for American billionaire Leon Black.

In spite of the weak pound, this was more of a series of domestic contests. A painting by John Lavery of the first day of Royal Ascot in 1922 saw London dealers Richard Green and Guy Morrison slug it out until Morrison, acting, it is believed, for Irish racehorse breeder John Magnier, secured it for a triple-estimate ￡187,500.

Another Lavery, of an impromptu Armistice Day parade in 1918, saw the Imperial War Museums claim it against no competition for ￡250,000. At Christie’s, Morrison was in action again over a painting of a bustling race meeting by Lowry, which he bought for his client for a double-estimate ￡5.3 million – the third highest price ever paid for a Lowry.

Gilly Kinloch, the British art adviser, also pushed prices to record levels on two occasions before giving way to anonymous phone buyers. After decades in the shadows of his fellow School of London associates, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, 91-year-old Leon Kossoff passed the ￡1 million mark when an expressionistic view of Willesden Junction in 1971, from the collection of businessman Frank Cohen, doubled his auction record to sell for ￡1.4 million.

Also breaking the ￡1 million barrier for the first time was Peter Lanyon – his colourful but seldom seen abstract Orpheus, from 1961, selling for ￡1.2 million. But two thirds of the lots in this sale sold either on their low estimates, below them, or not at all.

This was a week when even the ever-popular Elisabeth Frink found that 17 works were too many for the market to absorb at once, and seven went unsold. 

There was more bidding lower down the price scale. Jasia Reichardt, the veteran art critic, one of the great supporters of contemporary art in the Sixties, had six minimalist pictures from those days by Richard Lin, the UK-based artist, tucked away.

Now that Lin, who died in 2011, is sought after in his native Taiwan, prices have mushroomed. Reichardt’s pictures, never exhibited before and estimated at ￡96,000, sold for ￡352,500.

Further down the scale again are the underrated British constructivist artists. Burgeoning interest in the field was reflected in record prices for Kenneth and Mary Martin, Antony Hill, Bill Culbert and Jeffrey Steele in the ￡14,000 to ￡80,000 range.

Sotheby’s had less to write home about, though. Its opening sale of paintings by David Bomberg, the influential Jewish artist, met with controversy when several of the gallery’s advisory panel, including Nicholas Serota and Norman Rosenthal, resigned in protest that afternoon.

Whether the resignations dampened bidding is not clear but, of the five works, one was not sold, and two did not attract much competition, selling on their low estimates.

Offer Waterman, the London dealer, was not put off paying a mid-estimate ￡670,000 for the top Bomberg – an angular painting of a woman seated at a window – but the bidding was otherwise symptomatic of an evening in which more lots struggled to sell than not.

After the sale, London dealer Jonathan Green, who had paid a double-estimate ￡250,000 for an impressionistic still life by Lucien Pissarro, said estimates were generally set too high for the trade to compete. By restricting bidding, he said, auctioneers are trying to dictate prices.

And when private buyers are not out in force because they are anxious about Brexit, bidding will be thin except for the very best – which makes the market look weak, even though it isn’t, he said. That is something the salerooms are going to have to come to terms with in the immediate future.

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