Results: British, European & Sporting Art Sale 11th July

Outstanding results were seen for traditional paintings in the British, European and Sporting Art Sale, held at Tennants Auctioneers on 11^th July, with numerous lots selling well above pre-sale estimates and confident bidding. One of the top lots of the sale, selling for £10,500, was a sensitively rendered and inciteful portrait of Mary Elizabeth Hall, painted in 1922 by the renowned portrait painter Sir Gerald Festus Kelly (all figures exclude buyer’s premium). The painting was originally full length. Aged just 14 at the time, Mary was an impatient sitter and refused to stay to have her legs painted, so the artist asked his wife to stand in as a leg model to finish the work. The wilful Mary, not impressed with the imposter legs, cut off the majority of the canvas leaving just the bust-length portrait. A second depiction of a young girl, this time standing in a hedgerow picking blackberries and painted by Philip Richard Morris, who was known for his history and genre paintings, sold well at £7,500.  

The top lot of the sale, however, was an impressive depiction of “A Highland Glen” by Louis Bosworth Hurt, which sold for £19,000 against an estimate of £3,000-5,000. Hurt, a Derbyshire native, is known for his paintings of highland cattle in Scotland, and he also kept his own herd of the cows at home. A good range of works by master ornithological artist Archibald Thorburn from a private collection in Norfolk sold well throughout, with the top price going to his depiction of Common Arctic Terns nesting, which sold for £11,000. From the same collection came a pair of works by sporting artist Lionel Dalhousie Edwards; the two paintings depicted 1957 horse races at Cheltenham and sold for £7,500. A further highlight of the Sporting section of the sale was ‘Hare Coursing, Stonehenge’ by John Emms, which sold for £10,000.

The sale achieved a total hammer price of £180,060 for 89 lots and an impressive 96% sold rate.

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