A delicate watercolour painting by one of Scotland’s most loved artists, Elizabeth Blackadder, sold for £18,000 (plus buyer’s premium) in Tennants Auctioneers’ Modern and Contemporary Art Sale on 9th October. ‘Flower Studies’ was commissioned by the then Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond for his 2012 charitable Christmas card to mark the Year of Natural Scotland. Blackadder, who died only weeks ago, was best known for her delicate, beautifully observed flower paintings and her place as the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy.
Northern Art sold strongly throughout the sale, topped by ‘Come Back’ by Brian ‘Braaq’ Shields. Depicting the moment a young boy, representing ‘Braaq’, runs across a cricket match set against a brooding industrial city-scape, the painting sold for £15,000. By the same artist and selling well at £7,500 against an estimate of £3,000-5,000 was a pair of pencil drawings ‘Young Boy with a Dog’ (self-portrait as a boy) and ‘Young Boy and Girl’ (self-portrait as a boy with his sister?). Further paintings of note included Mary Fedden’s ‘"Fruit", Still Life with Grapes, Pears and Cherries’ that sold for £7,500, and David Shepherd’s ‘Cool Tiger’ that also sold for £7,500.