Welsh School Artists in Demand at Halls Modern and Contemporary Art Sale

Halls Auctioneers in Shrewsbury are celebrating strong sale results for their recent online Modern and Contemporary Art auction which ended on the 27th October. The auction saw confident online bidding for named artists such as Graham Sutherland, John Knapp-Fisher, Will Roberts, Augustus John and Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe, with artists connected to Wales surpassing expectations.


29/10/2019     Pictures

Halls Auctioneers in Shrewsbury are celebrating strong sale results for their recent online Modern and Contemporary Art auction which ended on the 27th October. The auction saw confident online bidding for named artists such as Graham Sutherland, John Knapp-Fisher, Will Roberts, Augustus John and Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe, with artists connected to Wales surpassing expectations.


The top lot of the auction was Graham Sutherland’s ‘Sea Wall II’, a preparatory painting for his large work in oil, Gorse on a Sea Wall, now hanging in the Ulster Museum, which sold for £2,700 (+bp). The timed online auction was scheduled to end at 5pm but ended up still going an hour and a half later with bidders battling it out over an oil painting of a Welsh castle attributed to Terrick Williams. Clearly the bidders felt the attribution to be authentic with the painting achieving a hammer price of £700 (+bp), against a conservative £150-£250 estimate.

 

 

Graham Sutherland's 'Sea Wall II'

Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), Sea Wall II sold for £2,700 (+bp)

 

Competitive bidding for Welsh School paintings led to strong prices for contemporary artist David Barnes and an auction record for painter Tom Gerrard, with his landscape ‘Tyn Drwfwl’ selling for £1,220 (+bp) against an estimate of £250-£350.

 

 

Tom Gerrard ‘Tyn Drwfwl’

Tom Gerrard (1923-1976) ‘Tyn Drwfwl’ sold for £1,220 (+bp)

 

Works on paper also proved strong for Welsh artists with a nude sketch by Augustus John selling five times over the top estimate and a typically dark, evocative portrait of a farmer by Will Roberts selling for £800.
Prints were in high demand, particularly etchings, with two military works by renowned war artist Anthony Gross and wood engravings by George Macklay all going over the estimate during the last nail-biting moments of the auction time.

Timed online auctions are part of a new direction for Halls Fine Art, using the internet as an exclusive platform for bidding. The sales function solely online, yet compliment traditional style auctioneering by having all items available for viewing within the saleroom in Shrewsbury.

The next online picture sale ‘20th Century and Contemporary Art’ will take place in February and we are now accepting consignments for this auction. We already have some exciting pictures ready for this next sale, with prints by Picasso as well as British talent such as Colin Hayes and Welsh Artist Sara John, the granddaughter of above-mentioned Augustus John.


For further information please contact Abigail Molenaar abigailm@hallsgb.com

 

 

 

 


 

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