54 12th March 2011
art market England’s international
■ Smaller London and regional houses pull in buyers from the Continent and Australia
Alex Capon reports
LONDON’S strength in the international art market is demonstrated often enough at the leading auction houses. But smaller London salerooms and auctions outside the capital can also draw overseas bidding, as was seen last month on a number of pictures with Continental and Australian appeal. The star lot at Chelsea’s Lots Road
Auctions on February 27 was the £28,000 New South Wales landscape by Arthur Boyd discussed on the facing page. A week earlier in North London, a pair
of more traditional oil paintings drew international competition at Hampstead Auctions (15% buyer’s premium) on February 17 with four telephone lines booked as well as several commissions left on the book and further bidders emerging in the room. Catalogued as Parisian street scenes,
the paintings of the outskirts of the French Capital were attributed to the Austrian artist Rudolf Ribarz (1848- 1904) who was based in Vienna and specialised in landscapes and country scenes.
Above: two views of Paris by Rudolf Ribarz that made £12,000 (left) and £10,000 at Hampstead Auctions in North London. Signed, dated and inscribed Ribarz
1880 Paris in the bottom right, the pictures came from a house in Highgate, the owner of which had recently inherited them and had no idea of their value. They were in decent overall condition,
needing only a clean and a repair to the lower section of one of the original gilt gesso frames. The vendors had originally taken them
to one of the larger London salerooms, but were told they were only worth around £1000.
However, works by Ribarz can
command up to £20,000, particularly at sales in his homeland where he most commonly appears. The two oils on boards here each
measured 10¼ x 8in (26 x 20.5cm) and so were smaller than most of his paintings. However, they featured a brighter palette than much of his output and they also featured well conceived female figures, making them notably rarer and more attractive. Offering them separately, the
auctioneers felt confident they would do
well against relatively cautious £1500- 3000 estimates. First up was one depicting a walled
footpath with a flight of stairs and a lady dressed in a yellow jacket with an umbrella. Commission and telephone interest took it well above predictions, then it was finally knocked down to a buyer in the room at £12,000. The following lot had more prominent
figures but, with the damaged frame, sold at £10,000 to a telephone buyer from Vienna, believed to be a member of the Austrian trade.
A globe-trotting artist goes
A HARBOUR scene by New Zealand artist Sydney Lough Thompson (1877-1973) brought bidding from Down Under at Dreweatts’ (22% buyer’s premium) sale at Donnington Priory on February 23. The artist divided his time between his
homeland and France, and this brightly coloured 14¾ x 18¼in (38 x 47cm) signed oil on board appeared to date from his spell in Brittany between 1911 and 1933. It came to auction from a private
London collection and, estimated at £5000-7000, sold at £6500 to a bidder from Australia against interest from the UK trade. According to Artnet, the artist’s highest
price at auction is €19,000 (£13,500) for a painting of the quay at Concarneau, Brittany, which sold at French saleroom Thierry & Lannon in May 2007. That picture, however, had more
prominent figures in addition to the attractive vibrant colours. The work at Dreweatts, nevertheless,
made a decent sum, easily outselling a similarly-sized oil on board at Christie’s South Kensington last September – a much darker harbour scene, devoid of any figures, which took £2000. The top lot at Dreweatts was a picture
of a sleeping baby by James Sant (1820-1916). This was a tondo by the
Left: harbour scene by Sydney Lough Thompson – £6500 at Dreweatts.
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