Antiques Trade Gazette 41


Above: Itea (from Aegean Suite) by Barbara Hepworth, 1971 lithograph, signed in pencil, artist’s proof aside from the edition of 90, 21in x 2ft 6in (54 x 77cm) – in the region of £3000 from Ian Rastrick Fine Art.


Rating Nash alongside Turner


Above left: Fleurs dans un Vase by Louis Valtat – £17,000 at Sworders. Above right: Ladies Seated on Elephants in a Jungle Glade by Roy MacNicol – £1950 at the same Essex sale.


Specialist decorative art and design sale lifts bids on picture offerings


HAVING seen their inaugural Decorative Art and Design sale in January yield rewards, Stansted Mountfitchet saleroom Sworders (20% buyer’s premium) squeezed another such event onto the calendar on August 2, during the generally quiet summer period. As well as ceramics, glass and works


of art offered in the sale (see ATG 2005, Auction Reports), there were 131 picture lots, most of which did better than they would have done in a regular sale, thought the Essex firm’s director and auctioneer Guy Schooling. The top picture was a particularly


decorative still life by Louis Valtat (1869-1952). Valtat was a prolific French artist


who became associated with the Fauvist movement, but it was relatively rare to see such a fully formed oil appearing at a UK provincial saleroom. Consigned by a local vendor, the 8¾


x 10½in (22 x 27cm) signed oil on canvas was estimated at £10,000-15,000 and sold to a Dutch buyer at £17,000 – a decent sum for a work of this size. As was the case at the January sale,


there was also plenty on offer here to tempt Modern British art buyers. Examples included an oil on board


from 1958 by Northern favourite Alan Lowndes (1921-1978). Entitled The Fire Wood Man, it


depicted a lone figure on a horse and cart and took a mid-estimate £5200 from a private buyer. Four illustrations by John Piper


(1903-1992) for Bertrand Russell’s 1959 study of Western philosophy Wisdom of the West were also amongst the Mod-Brit section. Offered together, the illustrations sold to a private buyer just below estimate at £14,500.


Anna Brady reports


ALTHOUGH he has dealt privately in Modern British art since 1998 from a base in North London, Ian Rastrick only became ‘shopkeeper’ of a gallery earlier this year. He chose of St Albans as the location, and now has a gallery at 38 Holywell Hill. The cathedral city might not seem


an obvious art gallery location, but Ian points out that Hertfordshire and the surrounding counties have strong links to 20th century art. Henry Moore moved to Hertfordshire in 1940 after his Hampstead home was bombed in the blitz, and Perry Green is now home to the Henry Moore Foundation. The abstract artist Alan Davie, now in his nineties, still lives and works in the county. Unsurprisingly, Ian is an ardent


Above: Paul Nash’s linocut Promenade – £1300 at Sworders. Up to £20,000 had been hoped


for, but bidding was, arguably, limited by the more academic subject matter compared to Piper’s more familiar romantic and architectural landscapes. A picture further down the price


scale that drew good bidding, perhaps on account of being a very large and striking Art Deco image, was Ladies Seated on Elephants in a Jungle Glade by the little-known American artist Roy MacNicol (1889-1970) who appears to have no track record in the saleroom. The 6ft 8in x 10ft 9in (2.03m x


3.27m) oil on canvas, signed and dated 1930-35, came from an Irish vendor who had consigned it after learning that the auctioneers were staging a sale specifically billed as a decorative event. Estimated at £1500-2000, it sold to a


UK provincial dealer at £1950 A further lot with an Art Deco theme


was a signed Paul Nash (1889-1946) print from 1920. Although it had a small tear and a


little discolouration, the 5¼ x 6in (13 x 15.5cm) linocut entitled Promenade drew a strong competition against an attractive £200-300 estimate. It sold to a buyer from Wales at


£1300. Elsewhere at the Sworders sale, seven


oil paintings by David Carr (1915- 1968), offered as six lots, all got away for a combined £2910. While the January sale saw five such


post-Cubist works by the London-born artist sell between £280 and £480, here the five lots took between £300 and £550.


exponent of Modern British art. “It is a period that is being recognised more and more as a high point in British art,” he says. “We can now talk comfortably about Paul Nash in the same breath as Constable or Turner. To drive out from Hertfordshire into Buckinghamshire and beyond one is constantly reminded of Nash’s landscape vision.” Although he initially concentrated


on the graphic work of Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson and Edward Wadsworth, Ian has since broadened his interests. His first themed show at the gallery, from October 1 to November 12, concentrates on British Abstract art from the end of the First World War to the present. It is titled That Bewildering Expression,


a phrase coined by Nash about abstract art, and includes 30 works by artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Terry Frost, William Gear and Alan Davie. Prices start in the hundreds and go up to around £10,000. Contact 01727 840043 www.ianrastrick.com


galleries@ antiquestradegazette.com


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