Western Morning News (Saturday)
‘Ella’ portrait by Dame Laura Knight
PENZANCE-BASED, family auctioneers David Lays has “stuck their heads down and got on with things” and it’s been a strategy that has borne fruit in more ways than one.
“We twiddled our thumbs for three weeks of the first lockdown and I soon realised that if we didn’t take action pretty quickly then we’d have no business to come back to,” said David Lay, who founded the firm in 1978.
David Lay’s specialist auctions have had an international online selling platform for many years but the business model also depended on busy viewings, with the public and many clients collecting their lots in person, which was hardly a Covidfriendly scenario.
In order to keep trading during Coronavirus, Lay’s made all its specialist sales, very well photographed, online only auctions. It also established its own postage service so that buyers anywhere in the world could receive their lots in an easy, streamlined process. It’s a strategy that has proved very effective and all of Lay’s online sales during 2020 were highly successful.
“Our sales have been remarkably buoyant,” said David. “I think during times of uncertainty, people are perhaps choosing to invest their money in art, quality antiques, gold and jewellery.”
Lays is very much a family firm; David’s daughter-in-law Martha is the Operations Manager and his daughter Caroline the Art Sale Manager. Lockdown auctions brought about another exciting development. “Having learned at my knee, Caroline had always expressed a desire to take to the rostrum, and during lockdown, when auctions were online only, she felt she could take the plunge. Caroline has now been auctioneering for six months and has a lovely, clear and relaxed auctioneering style,” said her proud father. Caroline is now Lay’s second female auctioneer under 30.
Caroline will be on the rostrum on January 28 and 29, selling many of the lots in Lay’s next auction, a phenomenal 750-lot fine art sale.
Undoubtedly one of the most exciting paintings is a beautiful nude study, circa 1913, by Dame Laura Knight, one of Britain’s most beloved artists. It truly is a family affair, as the model in the painting - Ella Naper, happens to be Caroline Lay’s great aunt. This work was painted in Lamorna, and is an early study of Ella that has never been seen before, other than a brief spell hanging at Penlee House when it was borrowed for an exhibition.
Ella was the model in Laura Knight’s celebrated 1913 work ‘Self Portrait with Nude’ which is a seminal, groundbreaking work in the history of female portraiture and as argued by the critic Simon Schama, one of the most important paintings of the 20th century. All of which makes this beautiful work, fresh to the art market, doubly exciting.
There is plenty in this sale to get excited about including a large, delightful Beryl Cook oil and three original ‘Addams Family’ cartoons.
View the online catalogue at www.davidlay.co.uk