Print

Demonstrating the benefits that provincial auctioneers continue to derive from the growth in demand for Modern British art, a number of this summer’s sale highlights in the regions were supplied by 20th century pictures.

A number of Edvard Munch (1863-1944) prints at the latest specialist prints sales in London showed how much buyers are in tune with the artist’s ‘personal touch’.

A David Hockney (b.1937) print is the highlight of The Cotswold Auction Company’s sale in Cheltenham on August 29.

Lockdales of Ipswich are probably best known as coin and militaria specialists but, having moved premises earlier this year, they have also offered some stand-out items in their fine art and antiques sales in 2012.

IT was a case of ‘last but not least’ at Bonhams’ latest prints sale in New Bond Street.

WHEN a large house in Cheshire was decommissioned by the army after World War Two, it was sold to a family along with its contents. Included in the sale price was this watercolour, pen and ink image of King Olaf by the Danish illustrator Kay Rasmus Nielsen (1886-1957) which was thought at the time to be a print.

AFTER the resignation of the speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin last week, the subject of this cartoon of the 1830s could hardy have been more topical.

There will be much more to come on the £2m Lewis Carroll’s Alice at Sotheby’s on June 6, but this week just one of ten recorded prints of Dodgson’s 1858 portrait of Alice Liddell as ‘The Beggar Maid’, which sold for £160,000.

Showing the Terra Nova at Cape Evans, this large, green toned carbon print is an example of the largest format photographs offered by the Fine Art Society in their 1913-14 exhibition of photographs taken by Herbert Ponting on Scott’s last expedition (this one measuring 2ft 6in x 23in – 75 x 58cm) and it sold for £5000 (Grigor Taylor) in the Bonhams Knightsbridge sale.

UK: THE market for Sir William Russell Flint (1880-1969) may have dropped somewhat in recent years – to no noticeable sorrow among the more avant garde – and only 61 of the 101 prints and watercolours got away at Bonhams & Brooks’ (15 per cent buyer’s premium) in London on February 28 .