Helen Bradley (1900-1979)

Many of us promise ourselves that we will take up painting in retirement, few of us ever do and even fewer stick at it and only a tiny few achieve commercial and critical success with their Art. Helen Bradley was one of these tiny few and in her own uniquely British way she created a whole new life for herself with her Art when at the age of 65 she began painting pictures each one recalling a memory of her Edwardian childhood. To begin with her paintings were a way for her to show her grandchildren just how different a place the world was for her as a child in the Edwardian Era.

Born in 1900 Helen Bradley was like the late Queen Mother, the same age as the century she lived in. She was born in Lees just outside Oldham in Lancashire and showed enough early artistic talent for her to study Art but only for one year from 1913, when as for so many others the Great War intervened stopping her art studies in their tracks , then marriage and children followed.

At first glance you might think that Helen Bradley’s paintings look a little like L S Lowry’s figure compositions, however she had her own unique style and technique just as Lowry has his. Indeed the two artists met early on in Bradley’s career, they got on well and Lowry continued to encourage Bradley in her work and the two developed a firm friendship. Neither artist followed or was influenced by the other and both held a strong admiration for each other’s work.

The majority of Bradley’s figure pictures depict specific remembered events and are often accompanied by a story handwritten in biro on a parcel label and usually attached to the back of the picture. These notes explain to some extent what the viewer is looking at in the composition and the characters, Bradley sets the scene for us to share her memories and individual characters the most famous of which is Miss Carter . This excerpt from her online biography explains a little about her characters.

She mixed a little pink colour, she painted the dress of a tiny figure. From that moment was created the enchanting land that was to delight millions. The figure she painted was that of Miss Carter (who wore pink) who features in most of Helen Bradley’s paintings. Other characters you will find are her mother, grandmother, her three maiden aunts, Mr Taylor (the bank manager) Helen herself with brother George and their dogs Gyp and Barney and many others.

These narrative paintings were first exhibited at The Saddleworth Art Society in 1965, followed by a London exhibition in 1966, and a sell out exhibition at the appropriately named Carter Gallery in Los Angeles in 1968.

In 1971 Jonathan Cape published the first of four books “And Miss Carter Wore Pink”. This was an instant success. German, French, Dutch and Japanese editions were published, and a special edition produced for the U.S.A.

Requests for illustrations of her work were satisfied by the publication of 30 Signed Limited Edition Prints, 3 Unsigned Limited Edition Prints and 11 Open Edition Prints.

Magazine features, appearances on television and radio endeared Bradley to the general public and led to her being awarded the M.B.E. for services to the arts, unfortunately she died on the 19th of July 1979 shortly before she was due to receive her M.B.E. from Her Majesty The Queen.

The market for Helen Bradley’s work is very well established and her work is regularly available at auction and in galleries and I hope that this little snapshot will whet your appetite for further investigation perhaps even a purchase. To start with you could consider buying one of her beautifully illustrated books of story pictures, all are out of print but are available online or in specialist galleries for around £15 to 30, the signed limited edition prints start at around £350.

Bridget Riley, Turning 91

‘Nature is the origin and feeds what I make’

As Bridget Riley turns 91 we look back at the work of a truly groundbreaking artist whose life and work is influenced by nature in all its forms.

‘I am a painter and that’s what I do’ said Bridget Riley in a recent BBC interview and looking back to the 60s you see just how fresh and new her work still is and as the years have gone on it only looks better, fresher and more new. Bridget Riley has spent 60 years pushing the boundaries of what is possible in art and continues to do so. Cornwall has been a major influence on Bridget Riley’s work almost from birth. Her great grandfather had built a Cornish family home on the coast in the 19th Century and at the outbreak of the War in 1939, Bridget along with her sister, mother and aunt decamped to Cornwall where they remained for the duration. Her father was away fighting and early on in the war was declared ‘missing’ which remained the case until happily at the cessation of hostilities the family was reunited. So in these formative years her influences were all female as they shared a small four room Cornish cottage. Bridget didn’t go to school for the five years the family was in Cornwall which she described as ‘heavenly, there was no transport and nowhere to go and no particular reason to go anywhere ‘ She was able to absorb the world around her watching the way waves move the unique shapes they make, there was just nothing else to do but to look and appreciate the world around her in this extraordinarily beautiful coastal landscape. There was a war on so there was no petrol for private cars and no public transport so you had to walk everywhere. Bridget’s fate as an artist was probably sealed during this time as both her mother and aunt had studied Art at Goldsmiths College so probably the foundations of her artistic future where laid and set during these heavenly five years. The shapes the sea makes as it rolls in and out on the tides were endlessly fascinating to Bridget. As she says herself ‘they will never be the same again each and every time they’re different, every single wave every single ripple, every single breaking of a wave on a shore or rock all are unique and have never happened before and will never happen again.

After the war Bridget began her studies in London and was classically trained at Goldsmiths College then followed by the Royal College of Art for some more classical training, all focusing on painting, drawing and sculpture. Her class mates included Peter Blake, Frank Auerbach and John Bratby. Her student work while at the Royal College is very much what was expected of you in the 1950s, sombre and faintly French narrative paintings nothing at all like you associate with Bridget’s work now. Bridget left the RCA in 1955 and intent on being a painter she set out to find her style, she found the work of Georges Seurat resonated and strongly influenced her then and for the rest of her life. She saw in his work something similar to what she was looking for, something new and different. For a while during 1959, she experimented by both adopting his style and by faithfully copying one of his pictures called

Bridget Riley's Seurat style original work from 1960

Bridget Riley's 1959 copy after George Seurat's work titled Le Pont de Courbevoie

‘The Bridge at Cordova’ a work dating from 1887. Her progress towards what we see as her familiar work today moved more rapidly as the 60s dawned, when everything that was needed to change social barriers and norms fell away and everyone was open to new ideas and looking for ways to progress fashion and trends further and faster than ever before. Bridget viewed the Art world as pretty stagnant in the 1950s, indeed she had a particular phrase she used to describe it ‘ Infectious apathy and vicious insularity’.

At this time the Whitechapel Gallery in London was at the epicentre of what was new and happening in Art, its director Brian Robertson was bringing over the work of the American Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock which encouraged the young British artists of Bridget’s generation to claim this space to showcase their work with confidence that it was all new and fresh and of its time.

Bridget Riley was inspired to create work that looked like nothing anyone had ever seen before, she not only broke the mould she literally blew it up! ‘The Kiss’ appears as one of her earliest groundbreaking images in 1961, in her first show in London when she really hit her stride and she had finally broken away from all the 19th Century conventions she had been taught about constructing a work of art.

 

We use ‘Abstract’ to describe Bridget’s work, but for me and many others including Bridget it’s not the right or appropriate word, it’s something else that draws from nature and shows nature. In these early years all of her work is black and white, what changes are the shapes, forms and movement variations. By 1962 discs appears with the movement expressed by the fading of the discs from left to right strong towards the centre and then fading out towards the sides this picture marks the beginning of experimentation between what the artist sees and what the viewer experiences, experimenting all the time with what it feels like to look at a work.

At the same time, the early 60’s witnessed the arrival of the Op Art, Psychedelic Movement with the appearance of mind bending art experiences teamed up with light and mechanical ways of making patterns to create optical illusions for an audience hungry for Psychedelic experiences.

It was a blockbuster exhibition of mixed International Contemporary Artists at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965 that sealed Bridget’s reputation as a major international artist. The exhibition took NY by storm, welcome as this was Bridget was totally taken by surprise and made uncomfortable by seeing how fast her art flowed out from MOMA onto the streets of NY. Within days of the opening her images had been siphoned off onto dresses, skirts T-shirts and fabrics of all sorts which defined the era for the rest of the 60’s.

However in commercial terms it was all out of her hands, imagine creating a series of paintings for a major exhibition and in the next morning it’s key elements are all in stock in Bloomingdale’s, all without your permission or involvement.

Colour appears in 1967 when along with the sculptor Philip King Bridget is selected to represent Britain at the Venice Biennial, where she becomes the first Briton and the first woman to win the International prize for painting.

Bridget’s work has continued to evolve and change over the intervening sixty years, in 2015 she returned to Black and White, Discs re-appear in her Annenberg Court painting for the National Gallery and now her work brightens up the long corridor walls of major hospitals in London and Liverpool. A trip to Egypt in the late 70’s brought a new series of works limited to the Egyptian palette of five colours only and the market for her work, once focussed only on the 1960’s has now broadened out to include all and everything and we all at Doerr Dallas wish Bridget a very happy 91st birthday on April 24th.

What is an NFT?

Will they stand the test of time? Non-fungible tokens explained.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seem to have come out of nowhere, however the technology has been around since at least 2014 if not before. The catalyst seems to have been Lockdown, if you can’t go to the saleroom then let the saleroom come to you, albeit virtually. Auctioneers, Galleries and Artists transformed their web presence almost overnight in order to offer NFTs that take the form of art and music and everything in between and are selling like hotcakes, some for a few £ and others for millions and millions of £, sometimes it feels like ‘Tulip Fever’ has re-visited us from the 17th-century…

What is an NFT?
An NFT is a digital asset recorded on the ‘Blockchain’ that represents actual objects such as art, music, in-game items and videos. An NFT is created, or “minted” from digital objects that represent both tangible and intangible items. They are bought and sold online, mainly using cryptocurrencies and are generally encoded with the same or similar software to that used by many crypto currencies. I think it’s best to assume that to be involved with buying NFTs you will have to embrace crypto currencies, the most common one used in NFTs is Ethereum. The value of Crypto currencies changes minute to minute day to day, before Christmas one Etheruem was worth around £3,000 to 1 Ethereum today its down to nearer to £2,200 to E1. Ethereum’s value is not only affected by the usual world events and demand but also by the sale of significant numbers of NFTs. Just like the Stock market, a collector offloading significant numbers of NFT’s creates downward price pressure on both crypto currency and the value of NFTs.

New NFTs are announced as ‘Drops’ and are either unique one off pieces or part of a limited edition exactly like limited edition prints, which interestingly were all the rage exactly 100 years ago back in 1922!
NFT ‘editions’ can be one off unique works or one from of a very limited run, large or small and each will have a unique identifying codes or features. Similar to Banksy print editions that are produced in total numbers of either 150 or 500, each print is individually numbered and carries formal certification and the ownerships changes are recorded, the smaller edition of 150 is also signed, typically numbered by hand in pencil, 7/150 the larger 150/500 etc.

What does fungible mean?
Physical money and cryptocurrencies are “fungible,” meaning they can be traded or exchanged for one another. For example I give you a fiver you give me one back and we are quits, i.e. they are fungible and equal in value – one dollar is always worth another dollar; one Bitcoin is always equal to another Bitcoin. Crypto’s fungibility makes it a trusted means of conducting transactions on the Blockchain.

What is Blockchain?
NFTs exist on a blockchain, which is a public ledger that records transactions and ownership. If you are already familiar with Crypto currency then blockchain is the same underlying process that makes cryptocurrencies possible.

Specifically, NFTs are typically held on the Ethereum blockchain, although there are other blockchains that support them as well.

Each individual unique NFT is different. Each one has a digital signature that makes it impossible for NFTs to be exchanged for or equal to one another (hence, non-fungible).
NFTs can have only ever have one owner at a time their unique data verifies their ownership and transfers ownership to new owners and artists can sign their artwork by including their signature in an NFT’s metadata.

Are NFTs here to stay?
I think yes, and they offer new opportunities and life enhancements. For example artists can now cut out the gallery and sell direct to the public and also engage with them face to face and online. Owners form communities who join together to discuss the artists they collect and follow. The discussions are not just about money, the NFT is very inclusive and no longer the exclusive domain of the mega wealthy collector and in buying NFT’s you support artists and get the inside track on the latest news and drops.
Also its all virtual you don’t have to worry about where to hang your piece, it lives in the secure ‘wallet’ on your phone and you can look at it anytime you like.

Who are the big names in NFT’s and why do collectors spend such huge sums of money on them?
The most famous and valuable digital artist is Mike Winklemann, better known as “Beeple” he made a composite of 5,000 daily drawings he made over five years to create perhaps the most famous NFT of the moment, “EVERYDAYS: The First 5000 Days,” which sold at Christies New York in March 2021 for £69 million. However you don’t have to own the Beeple NFT to see it, anyone can view the individual images—or even the entire collage of images online for free. So why are people willing to spend millions on something they could easily screenshot or download?
Owning the NFT allows the buyer to own the original item. Blockchain offers authentication and provenance which offers proof of ownership.
Artists can also program in future royalties so they can receive a percentage of sales whenever their art is sold to a new owner. This is an attractive feature for artists as generally they don’t always receive future proceeds after their art is first sold.

How do I Buy NFTs
First, you’ll need to get a digital wallet that allows you to store your new NFTs and cryptocurrencies. You’ll need to purchase some cryptocurrency like Ethereum, which you can buy using a credit card on platforms such as Coinbase, Kraken, eToro and PayPal. There will be fees so watch out for these, most exchanges charge a percentage of your transaction when you buy crypto.
Once you’ve got your wallet set up and funded, you are good to go. Currently, the largest NFT marketplaces are:

  •  OpenSea.io
  •  Rarible
  •  Foundation

These platforms are host to thousands of NFT creators and collectors, equally you can also go to auction as all the main International auction houses now have fully staffed departments dealing only with NFT’s with private and regular auctions and ‘Drops’. Also the bigger galleries such as Pace now have a separate NFT department.

Should I buy NFTs?
NFTs are risky because there is no discernible secondary market as yet and so there are no comparable secondary sale prices that you might be looking at if collecting mainstream art. It’s all just so new, so maybe it’s worth just dipping your toe in the water and go for individual artists selling direct like ‘Waxbones’ via the site knownorigin.io. I was very impressed when I heard him on Radio 4 recently, as he says himself ‘I design information and wayfinding for cities by day and expel my creative juices under the alias ‘Waxbones’. by night.. his prices start at around £300 for his limited editions.

Buying NFTs must be a personal decision and only if you have money to spare and remember that the value is based entirely on what someone else is willing to pay for it. An NFT when it comes to resale may go for less than you paid for it, or you might not be able to sell it at all if nobody wants it.

I heard a collector speaking on the radio recently, he owns 15 NFT’s which he has bought as part of his broader investment portfolio, he has valued them all at £O! This way as he says ‘the only way is up’!

There lots to study and see out there on NFTs so take a good look around and enjoy!



Sir Terry Frost, 1915-2003

To be asked to write an article about one of my favourite artists is truly a delight. Sir Terry Frost’s muse wasn’t a person but the Cornish town of St Ives. Thanks to Covid this unique seaside town with all its artistic heritage, glorious light, sights and sounds of the sea, which was for so long an inspiration for Terry, is now the ‘go to’ vacation spot for families across the UK, so hopefully current and future generations will get to see for themselves just what inspired Terry and so many other great artists over the years.

Terry was born and brought up in Warwickshire, he left school at 14 and started work locally, working mostly manual jobs with no sense that his natural artistic ability would ever make him a living. When war came he served as a regular soldier, first in France then the Middle East and Greece before joining the Commandos. While serving with them in Crete in June 1941 he was captured and sent to various prisons for the duration of the war. During his time at Stalag 383 in Bavaria, he met the painter Adrian Heath who saw Terry’s talent and encouraged him to paint. Terry later described these years as ‘a tremendous spiritual experience’, he felt that he had gained ‘a more aware or heightened sense of perception during my semi starvation.’




As soon as the war was over, Terry went to study at the Birmingham College of Art, he soon discovered the action was in London and moved down to Camberwell School of Art. By 1946 he had removed to study at St Ives School of painting for one year where he held his first one man exhibition in 1947. He continued his studies in London and Cornwall and when in 1950 he was elected a member of the Penwith Society, he made a move to St Ives in 1951. He later taught at Leeds and in Cyprus and finally settled in Banbury, Oxfordshire in 1963.
In 1960, Frost held his first one-man show in New York at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery. This exhibition was a seminal moment in his career and he said of this experience:
In New York they all came to my exhibition, de Kooning, Rothko, Klein. Newman and Motherwell all took me to their studios.

I accepted it all as normal and they accepted me. They were all painters struggling to get somewhere like I was. They worked hard; they would sleep until noon, do eight or nine hours in the studio, and then starting at eleven at night proceeded to drink me under the table! Then we’d go out at four in the morning and have breakfast at a Chinese restaurant.’

I first met Terry in the 1980’s during my early days at Christie’s, I would see him either at our auction preview ‘Drinks’ or at his shows at the Whitford gallery just around the corner in Duke Street. He was always full of fun and told great stories such as this one from his days working in the 1950’s as an assistant to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth in her studios in St Ives … Hepworth was convinced her clients would not buy her work if they knew she didn’t make everything herself, so she was understandably nervous whenever prospective clients came to visit her studios. Terry told me that whenever visits took place he and the other assistants all went down to the pub until the coast was clear. One particular day important clients were coming so Terry and the other assistants made themselves scarce in the pub as usual, expecting on their return to find the visitors long gone. However as soon they arrived back Barbara told them to hide, the clients has arrived late and were still in the house and would be coming up the path any minute now. The assistants all managed to quickly find a hiding place and Barbara began showing the clients around the garden and studio. Terry was well hidden behind a bushy tree, however he could feel all the beer was beginning to well up inside him and very soon he was going to have to pee ! He hung on and on but with the tour continuing he could hold out no longer. He couldn’t risk nipping to the loo so performed the task from his bushy hiding place thinking he had got away with it. However unknown to Terry he had unwittingly created a small river which was running swiftly down the path towards Barbara and her prospective clients, Barbara noticed the stream but luckily her clients were too busy enjoying their tour to notice and Terry got an ‘earful’ from the boss after they had gone.


Terry’s many talents were fully recognised during his long career, he was made an R.A. in 1992 and Knighted in 1998. Speaking in the 1980’s about his work he said; ‘A shape is a shape, a flower is a flower.

A shape of red can contain as much content as the shape of a red flower. I don’t see why one should have to have any association, nostalgia or evocation of any kind. It boils down
to the value of the shape and the colour.’
Terry was always making art and exploring new avenues and mediums. I went to his last London show at the Whitford Gallery to see he had totally changed his medium and had made wonderfully colourful moulded and blown glass pieces. Forever energetic and full of new ideas, Terry Frost represents all that is good and great about late 20th century British Art.

Looking for Lowry

L S Lowry, (1887-1976) is perhaps our most famous English painter of the 20th Century. Certainly, if you were appearing as a contestant on ‘Pointless’ then good luck trying for a pointless answer by naming Lowry as your answer in any question category! Most people in the UK today, young or old, and for some reason mostly male, will in some way or other have heard of Lowry.
As a Victorian, born in Manchester in 1887, he was the only child of Robert and Elizabeth Lowry. It seems he was always a disappointment to his mother, who really wanted a girl. Early photographs show him still wearing girls’ clothes aged 4 or 5. He also wanted to be an artist, which was yet another disappointment to his mother.

However, as the Lowrys were not wealthy enough to support the family, he was thwarted by having to work full time at his father Robert’s work place. This left no time for painting in the day, leaving him only the evenings to study, so that is what he did. Always older than everybody else, it took him the best part of 20 years to fully qualify. Even then, (although he never admitted it to anybody he knew), he had to continue to work full time, Monday to Saturday, and so only painted at night for many, many years. Indeed, probably through habit he continued to do this his whole life.

He was at his most productive after he retired from the Pall Mall Property company in 1952, when at least he had the whole day at his disposal. He was by then famous for his Industrial Landscapes which he began painting in the 1920’s. On retirement, he was keen to move on but inevitably his collectors still mostly wanted his ‘Industrials’.
He switched to a lighter, brighter, whiter, palate by the early 60’s and began to make small, quickly painted pictures, mainly with people and animals.
He has always been a popular artist at auction and as early as 1964 pictures were reaching record sums of near to £2,000, a very significant sum back in the day. His exhibitions in London at the Lefevre gallery were always a sell-out and so now prices for even small, genuine drawings and sketches are out of the reach for many collectors.
Limited edition prints had been around since the beginning of the 20th Century, with artists such as Picasso and Henry Moore signing limited editions of their printed work.
Lowry became involved in the late 60’s and early 70’s, signing everything personally. It is these that offer the new collector at least an entry level starting point as a collector. Generally speaking, the price range runs from £2,000 up to the dizzy heights of £20,000 for particularly rare examples.

This article gives a brief introduction to the 25 to 30 different signed prints by Lowry that are still available. They regularly come up for auction and are available in private galleries all around the UK. As they are multiples, they are a bit like buses – if you miss one, there will be another along soon. Hence, there is no need to jump in quickly. If this is something that you want to get involved with, see what’s out there and then dip your toe in the water .

Things to watch out for are – condition and colour, (some prints fade if they’ve been in strong sunlight), and avoid stains and rips. Good luck and enjoy the process!
LS Lowry (1887-1976)
1-3 are all original Lowry paintings

Station approach Manchester print

 

1) Going to the Match, 1953
Signed, oil on canvas, 71 x 92. This is an image of the original oil bought at the 1997 auction by Graham Taylor on behalf of the Professional Football association pension fund, it’s now on view in  the Lowry Salford
Original oil painting, Sold at auction for £1,926,500 in 1997


Station approach Manchester
2) The original Lowry painting Station Approach, Manchester 1960, oil on canvas, 76 x 101 cm
Sold for £2,322,500 in 2014


Punch and Judy
3) The original Lowry painting Punch and Judy. Signed and dated 1943, Oil on canvas, 41 x 56  cm
This original painting has changed hands multiple time since it first came up for auction in 1995 when it made £152,000, last time it sold was in 2019 when it made £611,000
Sold for £962,500 in 2014


The following are all signed limited edition prints of various original Lowry pictures and drawings

Going to the match
Going to the Match, 1953. Signed Colour print from an edition of 300, 56 x 70 cm
While the price paid for the original is not the record price the print version is the top priced Lowry print! It is to do with the subject, ie football and the fact that there were only ever 300 produced
£20,000 in 2020
£18,000 in 2015


Station approach Manchester print
Station Approach, Manchester. Signed colour print from an edition of 850, 40 x 50 cm
£3,187 in 2020
£3,100 in 2015


Punch and Judy print
Punch and Judy. Signed colour print from an edition of 75, 44.5 x 68.5 cm
Prices go down as well as up, the price for this particular print has gone down since 2015…
£5,062 in 2020
£8,100 in 2015


Britain at play
Britain at Play. Signed colour print from an edition of 850, 47 x 60 cm
£4,200 in 2021
£2,500 in 2015


Fever van
Fever Van. Signed colour print from an edition of 700, 45 x 54 cm
£4,800 in 2021
£2,500 in 2015


The Pond
The Pond. Signed colour print from an edition of 850, 45 x 58 cm
£4,000 in 2021
£2,200 in 2015



Market Scene in a Northern Town. Signed colour print, 46 x 60 cm
£5,000 in 2021
£2,700 in 2015



Man Lying on a Wall. Signed colour print. No 479 from an edition of 500, 40 x 50 cm
£7,200 in 2020
£6,000 in 2015


Group of Children
Group of Children. Signed colour print from an edition of 850, 18 x 19 cm
£3,825 in 2020
£1,800 in 2015


The Contraption
The Contraption. Signed Colour print from an edition of 750, 31 x 30 cm
£4,000 in 2020
£2,100 in 2015


Great Ancoats Street
Great Ancoats Street. Signed b/w print, from an edition of 850, 26 x 36 cm
£2,800 in 2020
£1500 in 2015


Salford Viaduct
Salford Viaduct. Signed, monochrome, lithograph from an edition of 75, 52 x 64 cm
£7,000 in 2021
Rare print, only two have been offered at auction, one sold for £6500 in 2016


Deal Beach sketch
Deal Beach, sketch. Signed colour print from an edition of 850, 26 x 50 cm
£5,000 in 2019
£3,500 in 2015


Burford Church
Burford Church. Signed colour print from a numbered edition of 850, 60 x 45 cm
£2,200 in 2020
£3,100 in 2015


A street full of people
A Street full of people. Signed b/w print from a numbered edition of 75, 62 x 97 cm. This particular print is no 2/75 and was embellished in blue crayon by Lowry himself which doubled its price to £20,000!
£10,000 in 2020. It’s a rare print only 5 have come up, one made £800 in 2012


Mrs Swindell's picture
Mrs Swindell’s picture. Signed colour print from an edition of 850, 40 x 30 cm
£3200 in 2020
£1600 in 2015


The football match
The Football Match. Signed and numbered black and white print from an edition of 850, 26 x 36 cm
£5,737 in 2021
£4750 in 2015


Three men and a cat
Three Men and a cat. Signed in blue biro, colour print, 25 x 17 cm
£3600 in 2020
£1800 in 2015


His familiy
His Family. Signed colour print from an edition of 575, 54 x 72 cm
£1785 in 2020
£1600 in 2015


The Secrets Revealed by the Back of Pictures

Next time you’re watching the Antiques Roadshow, look carefully to see what each of the different specialists do when they first examine a new item.

The jewellery specialists will get out their ‘loop’ (a small high magnification eye glass) and examine the setting, the stone its colour, light reflection, hallmarks and all the other little details of interest to them; the furniture specialists will crouch down on hands and knees to look underneath or pull out the drawers to rummage inside; the ceramic specialist will pick up the piece, turn it upside down and go straight for the base to look for marks and stamps and other clues.

The picture specialists have a similar routine. First a glance at the front and then flip it over to look at the back (size allowing). To the uninitiated it may look like they have hardly glanced at the front. So, what are picture specialists looking for? Well, there could be a whole host of things back there such as: if a picture has been re-framed there might be a sticker or a note left by the framer saying what was done and when. In some cases, it may have been exhibited and there may be exhibition labels pasted on the back of the picture. As dates and locations are usually included, this can help lead to identifying whether or not it is a more or less important work. It may have been bought from a commercial gallery and the quality or value may depend on the gallery it came from. There could have been restoration work carried out on the picture and or notes or labels that may give a hint or indication of where and it when it might have been repaired.

I have often heard the phrase ‘it’s got a very good back’ said about a picture with lots of labels. Certainly something attached to the back of a picture will rarely be removed once there, so it often feels like walking through history when looking at the back of a well labelled picture. It probably doesn’t make any sense if you’re not used to it, but it makes perfect sense if you spend your days looking at pictures. I have even seen specialists look at a photograph of a picture and then out of habit, turn the snap over to look at the back for anything interesting!

I thought it might be helpful just to share a few examples of the backs (and fronts) of some pictures and works on paper that I have seen myself. I also try to explain a little bit more about what I’m looking for, what we are seeing and what conclusions if any, we are able to draw.


L S Lowry (British, 1887-1976)
Children Walking up steps
Oil on board, 25 x 35 cm
Estimate, £150-250,000
From the Artist’s estate
Not signed or dated
Sold £137,000, March ‘21


Reverse of Children Walking up steps
Showing top left exhibition label for Crane Kalman London top left. Bottom centre, loan label for The Lowry Salford


L S Lowry (British, 1887-1976)
Broken Shop Window, 1950
Signed, Pastel, 27 x 37 cm
Estimate £35-55,000
Sold £50,000, March ‘21


Backboard of Broken Shop Window; the green label says NAN, code for Christies Cheshire office, and has Christie’s London address, it shows the work was consigned for sale from an owner in or near Cheshire. In white chalk a previous Christie’s sale date, lot 301 8/Jun/90. Black stencil KKS69, this is unique to Christies, London


Victor Pasmore ( British, 1908-1998)
Abstract, 1951-52, 68 x 83 cm, Oil on board
Estimate £60-80,000
Sold £72,750, Nov ‘20


Photo showing the back of above picture


Magnification of labels on the back see this label for an exhibition at a Jonathan Clark’s London Gallery…. No date probably circa 1990- 2000


Owner’s own label, Sir Martyn Becket’s


Carriers label name on label
Rob Oakden
Not significant


Arthur Tooth, a major London gallery label date, circa 1950’s stock no Cl 686


Arts Council 1980 exhibition label catalogue no 22


David Bomberg ( British, 1890-1957)
Old City and Cathedral, Ronda. 1935, signed lower left, oil on canvas, 64 x 76 cm
£400-600,000
Provenance Asa Lingard, Bradford
Sold £790,750


View of the back of Old City and Cathedral, Ronda, it’s all very original with its original canvas no labels evident so look for any writing on the canvas or wooden stretcher


Spotted some writing top left hand corneron the wood , it says ‘ Ronda, David Bomberg, Spain 1935. Possibly the artist’s hand writing or maybe a previous owner?


More writing top centre , it says ‘Richard Cork says Cuenca‘.
Richard Cork is the authority on Bomberg. This is in biro circa 1980’s so not the artist. Cork changed his mind to Ronda near Malaga.


Centre right, ‘Property of Mrs Nimmo‘ a previous owner again in biro so not Bomberg.


William Roberts (British, 1895-1980)
Women playing with Cats
1919, Signed. Pen ink and watercolour, 29 x 20 cm
£150-250,000
Sold £325,250, Nov ‘20


Back of Women playing with Cats; a great looking back.
Top a label for a show at Tate Britain in 1956, catalogue no 186, it then toured the UK.
Also showing the owners name at the time, Michael Tachmindji.
Hamet Gallery label, Feb 1971, very well known and respected gallery, sold by them to another owner. Arts Council label, they organised the Tate Show and its tour around the UK.


The cut out in the backboard shows the title inscribed on the back of the work itself, written by the artist ‘Women Playing with cats’


Ben Nicholson (British, 1894-1982)
Two Forms
Oil on board, 23.8 x 21.6 cm
Estimate £70-100,000
Sold June ‘18, £193,750


Back of Two Forms. See shipping label and owners name Mr Wright Luddington, who bought the work at the Lefevre Gallery London. See Lefevre gallery label underneath. See writing in pencil top centre, Two Forms, Ben Nicholson 1947, this is all the artist’s writing.

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You have £5,000 to spend – David Oxtoby prints

How Would I Invest £5,000? By CEO and Old Master Specialist, David Dallas

If my godfather left me £5,000, I wouldn’t hesitate to spend every penny buying the suite of etchings (24), which David Oxtoby produced in 1974.

Image of David Oxtoby swonderful etching

“S’wonderful”: Stevie Wonder. Signed, inscribed and dated ‘74. Published Sept 1974. Artist’s proof for an edition of 50. 3 colour etching on handmade English paper. Plate size: 165 x 142 mm

David Jowett Greaves Oxtoby is undoubtedly one of Britain’s greatest printmakers, as the show at the British Museum proved two summers ago. He was one of the notorious ‘Bradford Mafia’, a group of young Yorkshire artists, who after attending the Regional College of Art in Bradford, came to London to further their education at the Royal College of Art and The Royal Academy schools. As well as Oxtoby, the group included David Hockney, Norman Stevens A.R.A, John Loker and Mick Vaughn. Before he had left the Royal Academy schools, Oxtoby had his first one man show in New York. His was and is a prodigious talent.

By the early 1970s his hands were starting to crack, and he was told that he was allergic to the acrylic paints he was using. After taking medical advice, he took up etching and what a triumph that was. In collaboration with J.C. Editons he produced a suite of 24 immensely complicated, in some cases, 4 colour, etchings. I have the good fortune to own a set of artist’s proofs.

Image of david oxtoby the man etching

‘The Man’: Stevie Winwood. Signed, inscribed and dated ‘74. Published Sept ‘74. Artist’s proof for an edition of 50. 4 colour etching on handmade English paper. Plate size: 335 x 115 mm

In 1974 I worked for Alex Postan Fine Art and was entrusted with getting publicity for the show of etchings, which included watercolours and acrylics as well as prints. It was the easiest job I have ever had. Marina Vaizey wrote a half page review of it in The Telegraph, Bill Packer, a half page in the Financial Times and it was in the list of the 10 best things to do this Christmas in London in the Daily Express. Rod Stewart came to the private view.

Oxtoby went on to exhibit with the Redfern Gallery in Cork Street in the 70s where the private views would sell out. Elton John bought Oxtoby’s canvases in vast numbers, for prices that were somewhere between Hockney and Picasso. He is still with the Redfern.

Image of David Oxtoby and Rod Stewart

Private View at Alex Postan Fine Art, Dec 1974. David Oxtoby and Rod Stewart in front of a 5 ft high watercolour by Oxtoby. Photograph by Miki Slingsby

He has had more than 50 solo exhibitions and taken part in more than 70 group shows, yet for much of the last 30 years has lived like a recluse and kept all his latest work from public scrutiny. The result of this has had an adverse effect on the value of his work.

Oxtoby has not had the recognition for the brilliance of his draftsmanship and use of colour from the establishment that his oeuvre deserves. This seems to be because his work is inspired by popular culture, pop, rock and blues music, which is considered low brow and because he works from photographs, despite knowing subjects like Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison and Roger Daltrey well.

He was 82 in January and is not in good health. The cracked hands, which turned him into a printmaker, were actually caused by misdiagnosed diabetes. What future generations will make of his work remains to be seen, but I believe he is ready for a critical re-assessment and should take his rightful place amongst the greats of late 20th/early 21st century British art.

Patrick Heron (1920-1999)

patrick heron header

Patrick Heron was one of the leading painters of his generation and one of my artist heroes. Like me, Heron also had artist heroes. His were chosen from the great French Post-Impressionist painters; namely Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cezanne, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse and the influence of each artist can be seen in many, if not all, of Heron’s paintings.

henri matisse l'atelier rouge

Henri Matisse, L’Atelier Rouge, Oil on canvas, 181 x 220 cms, Painted in 1911. Collection MOMA New York
Heron first saw this picture during the war in a basement gallery in London, it was for sale at £600 and was bought on behalf of the American collector Mrs Simon Guggenheim who later bequeathed it to MOMA. Heron did not have the money to buy it, however it made such an impression on him that he visited the gallery every day until it was finally sold.

Matisse, as the master of colour, was the inspiration and guide for Heron’s use of colour throughout his professional career. Heron knew Braque and describes a visit to his studio where he saw something completely new to him – an artist working on multiple pictures all at the same time. He speaks of watching while Braque frugally uses up any left-over paint by flitting from picture to picture to find the best location for every tiny dot of colour. Heron considered Bonnard an under-appreciated, semi-abstract painter artist and his mastery of the figure and its importance to a composition was a great influence on Heron’s art throughout the 1940’s and 50’s. Cezanne’s landscapes, when transferred to the scenery of Cornwall, also provided constant inspiration.

patrick heron early work

Some early drawings and watercolours by the young Patrick Heron aged from 3-8 years old

Heron himself was somewhat of a child prodigy. At the age of three he was making very competent landscape and figure drawings. By five he was almost up to Art School standard. His artistic and enlightened parents eased the burden on Heron’s school teachers by telling them not to worry too much about teaching him anything – he was going to be an artist anyway so he should be left to focus on that. At his secondary school near Harpenden he was indeed left to his own devices. His art teachers could no longer teach him anything and so he painted all day and so was largely self-taught.

Patrick heron bedroom mousehole

Bedroom Mousehole, Cornwall. Signed and dated 1946, Oil on canvas, 76 x 63 cms
Sold in 2018 for 120,000 Euro.
Exhibited at Heron’s first one man show at the Redfern in 1947,

Cornwall was a great influence on Heron. Having first visited there as a child, the family later moved to Hertfordshire where they founded Cresta – a firm of silk printers where Heron helped out by designing scarves aged just 14. He finally returned to Cornwall due to the Second World War. A conscientious objector like his parents, Heron was allowed to go down to Cornwall to work with the potter Bernard Leach; an extraordinary piece of good fortune as Heron was not only able to hone his artistic skills by making pots, he also thrived under the watchful tutelage of Leach. He continued to paint throughout the war and afterwards in 1947 he had his first one-man show at The Redfern Gallery in London.

Patrick heron blue table with window

Blue Table with Window, Signed and dated 1954,
Oil on canvas, 102 x 127 cms
Sold in 2011 for £ 1,049,250 , current auction record price.

Heron was by now spending every summer in Cornwall and a clear transition from figurative painting to pure abstract began through the late 1940’s and 1950’s, always edging nearer to pure colour. This culminated in 1956/57 when he bought ‘Eagles Nest’, a cliff top house near St Ives, which he first saw as a child. Here in Cornwall he paints, ‘Interior Garden Window’ – his final major narrative painting, and then begins a new chapter with the pure abstract ‘Camellia Garden’. Everything thereafter is abstract and all about colour, light and shapes.

Patrick Heron Interior with garden window

Interior with Garden Window , circa 1955/1956,
Oil canvas, 121 x 152 cms. Collection Tate Britain
Heron’s last narrative painting before becoming a totally abstract painter

Watching Heron’s work ethic on film is exhausting. He is either out walking miles every day or painting long hours in Ben Nicholson’s old studio in St. Ives. He can be seen working on a large canvas, almost the size of a bedroom wall. It takes 13 hours straight to fill in the spaces using paint straight from the tube and he works without stopping, explaining that should he take a break then the paint will dry and a mark or ridge will appear where he left off and spoil the picture.

Patrick Heron camelia garden march

Camellia Garden, March. Signed and dated 1956, oil on canvas, 182 x 91 cms
Sold 2008 for £668,450
Herons first solely abstract painting following directly on from ‘Interior with Garden Window’

From my selection of images, I hope you can see the transition from semi-narrative to pure abstract and the energy and the warmth that comes through from Heron’s exceptional art.

Patrick Heron atmospheric strata

Atmospheric Strata, Feb 1958. Oil on canvas, 122 x 56 cms. Sold 2013 £626,000
One of a relative rare series of very attractive and commercially successful ‘stripe’ paintings

Heron was successful right from his first show in 1947 and in 1985 he was honoured with a retrospective exhibition at the Barbican, which is probably the largest assembly of his works. His prices remained constant for many years until in 2006 they spiked. Prices continued to rise until 2009, when they settled back down a little, but remained strong for Masterworks from both pre and post 1957 eras.

Patrick Heron would have been 100 this year and I am sure that if he were still alive and able to paint, he would be making art as energetically now as he was throughout his amazing career.

Bridget Riley, CH, CBE. Born 1931

Bridget Riley Bassacs 94 banner

Bridget Riley, Bassacs, ’94 (section), signed and dated 94, gouache on paper, 66 x 87 cms. Sold Nov 2019, £250,000

It is impossible not to be moved both spiritually and physically while standing in front of a major work by Bridget Riley. She belongs to a painting movement known as ‘Op Art’.

Bridget Riley Shift 1963

Bridget Riley – Shift, 1963. Oil on canvas, 75 x 75 cms. Sold twice recently in London, June 2016, £1,426,500 and then February 2020, £2,715,000

Not to be confused with Pop Art, Op Art is short for Optical Art, a style of visual art that uses optical illusions and effects with the aim of destabilising the viewer. The viewer gets the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrating patterns or of swelling and warping. The movement emerges in the 1960’s and includes other major International artists such as Victor Vasarely and Jesus Rafael Soto.

Bridget Riley Primitive Blaze

Bridget Riley – Primitive Blaze, emulsion on board, 1963, 94 x 94 cms.
Sold June 2007 for £826,400

Just try standing directly in front of a Riley work, especially a large 60’s black and white piece. It truly is a unique experience. After a few seconds you begin to feel woozy, then you begin to feel like you are being pulled into the picture itself and so you begin to move involuntarily and to sway gently to gain access, and then your eyes go fuzzy. This effect all comes from the artist’s specific design and her precise aim is to make this happen to you.

Bridget Riley Chant 2

Bridget Riley – Chant 2, 1967, Emulsion on canvas, 231 x 231 cms. Sold July 2008, £2,561,250

Bridget Riley uses a studio system to make her pieces; she makes the original design and then her super skilled team produce the finished pictures under her direct supervision throughout. Her distinctive way of working owes little to other artists and her skill, knowledge and experience now spans over 50 years as a working artist. By using a studio method with teams of people who will carry out her ideas and put them into practice means she is freed up to constantly have new ideas and to refresh her art and output.

Bridget Riley Study Point Movement

Bridget Riley – Study fo Point Movement, signed, gouache on card, 68 x 73 cms. Sold Nov 2017, £162,000

I love the sheer precision of her work and also the variety, and I marvel at how she manages to always make it undoubtedly recognisable as the work of Bridget Riley. The most desirable and expensive pieces are the black-and-white works which span the early 60’s from 1961-1964. These culminate in the 1965 exhibition ‘ The Responsive Eye’ held at MOMA New York, when ‘Current’ 1964, by Riley was selected for the front cover of the catalogue.

ridget Riley October 5 Revision of August 11

Bridget Riley – October 5, Revision of August 11, signed and dated 98, gouache on paper, 85 x 56 cms. Sold March 2020, £125,000

Colour works begin to emerge from 1967 onwards and are inspired by places Riley knows or has visited. For example, the ‘Ka’ and ‘Ra’ series relate to her visits to Egypt and evoke the colours, shapes and light in Egypt. The series, ‘Les Bassacs’ is inspired and named after the village of the same name in Provence, near to where Riley has her studio.

Bridget Riley Bassacs 94

Bridget Riley, Bassacs, ’94 (section), signed and dated 94, gouache on paper, 66 x 87 cms. Sold Nov 2019, £250,000

For collectors there is much to choose from; an easy and affordable starting point being the many limited-edition prints, followed by works on paper and then paintings. The big money has until recently been for the 60’s black and white works only which inevitably are now very rare, so in recent years large scale colour works from the 70’s and 80’s and later have increased in price significantly.

Bridget Riley Serpentine Study 1999

Bridget Riley – Serpentine Study, 1999, gouache on paper, 39 x 38 cms
Sold Oct 2019, £50,000

For me, the genius of Bridget Riley is that her work never dates and is always fresh and vibrant in its intensity and vision.

Bridget Riley Six Circles

Bridget Riley – Six Circles, gouache, 1970, 79 x 45 cms. Sold June 2018, £125,000

 

Dame Laura Knight, RA, DBE, RWS (1877-1970)

Dame Laura Knight was an extraordinarily gifted painter, who despite being painfully shy in her early years, later developed a great sense of personal style and strength of character and honed her true genius for colour and composition.

Laura Knight - Artist’s Self Portrait

Laura Knight – Artist’s Self Portrait, at her easel, public collection

Laura had a great lust for life and embraced everything it threw at her; from being a teaching assistant at Nottingham School of Art, aged 13, via the shores of North Yorkshire and Cornwall and following critical success becoming the first ever female Royal Academician. She was also the only female War artist in World War Two, covering the Nuremberg War Crime trials as the official British artist, with her career culminating in1963 with being the first female artist to have a full retrospective exhibition of her work at the Royal Academy.

Laura Knight - Nuremberg war crimes trials

Laura Knight – Nuremberg war crimes trials, collection of the Imperial War Museum

What a life! Laura really packed everything in. She had a very pale ‘English Rose’ complexion and blushed very easily, especially when confronted by ‘chaps’ other than her husband, the painter Harold Knight whom she married in 1903. For those of you who like movies featuring real artists, you can see Laura on Netflix in the flesh as it were in the 2013 movie ‘Summer in February’ starring Dominic Cooper as the painter Alfred Munnings, Laura is brilliantly played by Hattie Morihan and the movie is set in Lamorna, Cornwall.

Laura Knight - On the Cliffs, Cornwall

Laura Knight – On the Cliffs, Cornwall. Signed, oil on canvas, 63 x 76 cms. Sold December 2009, £ 646,050 the current world record price

The action takes place in February of 1913. As Spring comes early down there, it was during what proved to be the last golden, warm, and peaceful Cornish Spring before the destruction and devastation of WW1 arrived in 1914. Laura is tongue-tied and red in the face whenever she is confronted by the roguish painter Alfred Munnings (Dominic Cooper is just playing himself I think!), who takes every opportunity to embarrass Laura with his advances whenever Laura’s husband Harold was nowhere to be seen.

Laura Knight Ballet Girl and Dressmaker

Laura Knight, Ballet Girl and Dressmaker, signed, oil on canvas, 96 x 122 cms. Sold July 2018, £322,000

Laura learned painting from her mother who taught at Nottingham School of Art. When she was only13 her mother became terminally ill and Laura effectively took on her role. She married her childhood friend the painter Harold Knight (1874-1961) in 1903 and they moved to join the Staithes artists’ colony based on the North Yorkshire coast due north of Whitby, living and working in or near the village of Staithes .

Laura Knight - Packing Fish, Staithes

Laura Knight – Packing Fish, Staithes, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cms. Sold March 2013, £20,000

Her style is quite different in Staithes. As money was tight, she painted mostly in watercolour there. However, the work is very charming. She loved the local people and depicted their daily life in low-ceilinged, poorly lit interior with figures using muted and subtle colours.

Laura Knight - Marsh Mallows, Cornwall

Laura Knight – Marsh Mallows, Cornwall. Oil on canvas, 76 x 64 cms. Sold Dec 1999, £331,500

The Knights moved to Cornwall in 1907 and by 1908 Laura’s style had transformed under the influence of the warm, brilliant light, dazzling blue green seas and glorious sunny days. All this lifted her palette and her work to new heights. When this new work was first shown at the Royal Academy it caused a sensation and even today these truly remarkable Cornish pictures always command the highest prices.

Laura Knight - Munitions worker

Laura Knight – Munitions worker, collection of the Imperial War Museum

Laura Knight was a great painter in the British Impressionist tradition and a trailblazer for women artists of the 20th Century. Both Laura and Harold enjoyed critical and financial success, with Laura notably arriving in her Rolls-Royce to paint at the Epsom Derby. She was also amazingly productive, painting continuously for well over 50 years.

Laura Knight A dull day Epsom

Laura Knight – A dull day Epsom, oil on canvas, 63 x 76 cms. Sold may 2014, £88,000

She was always on the hunt for new subjects, which in addition to Staithes and Cornwall include; the theatre, ballet, the circus – with all its players and characters – glamour girls and ladies, horse racing, fairgrounds, landscapes… She was a remarkably busy lady indeed, so luckily for the collector there are many buying opportunities, from fine black and white etchings for not much money, to drawings and sketches, and watercolours and oils.