This still life is catch of the day
A Salisbury auctioneer is scaling new heights when selling off modern British works, finds Colin Gleadell
Salisbury auctioneer Woolley & Wallis is making a name for itself. Last week, it was disposing of the private collection of the late Geoffrey Harley, an antiques dealer who decorated his home with modern British art. Estimated to fetch about £310,000, 95per cent of the 190 lots sold for £813,800, including commissions and VAT. Among the lesser known artists’ results were a record £4,680 for a still life of lemons by Julian Paltenghi, and an abstract painting by the sculptor Paul Mount, which fetched a record £4,420 – both 10 times the estimates. Topping the bill was the double-estimate £132,600 given by Bond Street dealer Richard Green for William Scott’s Fish on a Plate, 1983. Scott returned to fish paintings throughout his career and this, says Green, is one of his best.
An exhibition, Fake Fashion, at the Amanda Wilkinson gallery in London’s Soho shows a series of works made by American artist and photographer Laurie Simmons in 1984 during the Reagan era, when fashion photographers were becoming famous. The slightly subversive images are of real people dressed in recycled junk-shop clothing, posing like models on a fashion shoot against fabricated backdrops. A successful and respected artist, Simmons never exhibited the work; it was only used as artwork for a magazine. Now, 34 years later, she is exhibiting the prints for the first time. Measuring 5ft high and printed in colour, they certainly have presence, and are $45,000 (£32,540) each. Some of Simmons’s photographic works have sold at auction recently for $100,000, and next year she will have a prestigious retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Chicago. This time last year, Sotheby’s staged the most valuable auction ever in Europe when its Impressionist and Modern art evening sale in London realised £177million. Christie’s trailed behind with £94million. This year, however, Christie’s estimates it will topple that Sotheby’s record with as much as £183million. It has stacked its sale with twice the number of lots as Sotheby’s, which is looking at £126million. Sotheby’s has the lion’s share of the £87million of Picassos on offer, while Christie’s leads in the £58million surrealist sales. A smaller area is for the Fauves, of which Matisse is, undoubtedly, the most famous (see Charles Saatchi, opposite), but the focus will be two paintings by André Derain, whose early-20th-century work has just been the subject of an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Christie’s has already announced the sale of a 1906 view of Westminster Bridge, estimated at up to £9million, and Sotheby’s has countered with another Derain from 1905. Bateaux à Collioure is estimated to fetch £10million and is guaranteed – so it will sell. The painting was last at auction in 2011 when the Russians were a major buying force in this market. Since then, the Chinese have arrived as a major force, and both Christie’s and Sotheby’s will be hoping Derain’s Fauve works will be on their shopping lists.