Among the lots from the country estate in Berkshire, owned by multiple generations of the Palmer Family, was a scene by Paul Nash (1889-1946). This rare example of an interior subject by the Surrealist painter had entered the family collection long ago in the 1930s. Prior to that, it had passed through London gallery Arthur Tooth & Sons.
The picture dates to 1930 - a year after the death of his father, with whom he was close and which he described in a letter to a friend as “a tragic business”.
The auction house based in Donnington Priory in Newbury catalogued the 2ft 7in x 15in (81 x 39cm) oil on canvas as “slightly claustrophobic and nostalgic but with an underlying disquiet that is present in Nash’s finest works”.
The juxtaposition of the haphazardly arranged pot of dried plants and the precision of the architect’s T-square resting in the corner is explored in other works by Nash around this time; notably Dead Spring of 1929 at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.
It was knocked down to the UK trade for a mid-estimate £70,000. The price is the joint highest at auction for a complete interior scene alongside Interior, Pantile Cottage, Dymchurch, 1925, although a handful of interior still-lifes have made more at auction.
Wallis works
Penzance Fishing Boat near The Coast by Alfred Wallis, £55,000 at Dreweatts.
Elsewhere, strong bidding emerged for two naive-style pictures by Alfred Wallis (1855-1942), the St Ives artist who took up painting aged 70 with the aim to conserve the town’s declining fishing industry. The duo, featuring fishing boats on irregular cut scraps of board, are signature examples by the former fisherman and were offered in “good original condition”.
They had been owned by the family since the 1970s and ‘80s, which added significantly to their appeal given forgeries have troubled the market in recent years.
Penzance Fishing Boat near The Coast, a colourful near-square 8¾ x 8¼in (22 x 21cm) oil on board estimated at £20,000-30,000, proved the more commercial of the two with its harbour and vivid green land, and was eagerly contested to £55,000 where it was knocked down to a UK private buyer.
The family had bought the painting for £3200 at the Sotheby’s sale of the late Sir John and Lady Witt collection in 1987.
The other work, a 7 x 12in (18 x 30.5cm) oil on card of two fishing vessels near a lighthouse, sold for £42,000 against an identical estimate.
While these are by no means top prices for Wallis - his auction record is in six figures - the results, together with the £27,000 Bryan Pearce still-life achieved days later at Lay’s (see main report on facing page), reflect today’s strong appetite for naive-style Cornish art.
Mod Brits star in saleroom
Other Mod Brit highlights at Dreweatts included Duncan Grant’s (1885-1978)The Sussex Weald. The c.1920s landscape, depicting sheaves of corn and Firle Beacon close to the Bloomsbury artist’s famous home of Charleston, was eagerly contested to the tune of £52,000 and sold to a private buyer. A Matthew Smith (1879-1959) view of Dieppe Harbour, also dated to the 1920s, easily outstripped a £20,000-30,000 guide to sell for £42,000.
See Auction Reports this week for more coverage of the Bussock Wood sale.
