Fine art auction

Words by:
William Gregory MRICS Golding Young and Mawer
Featured in:
August 2013

Over £100,000 of pictures sold to local, national and international buyers at the second Specialist Fine Art sale of the year at Golding Young & Mawer’s Lincoln auction rooms.
The evening sale featured 225 lots in three sections: twentieth century and modern, local interest and eighteenth and nineteenth century.

The local interest section included a pastel study of two females by the Lincoln artist, Antonin (Tony) Bartl (1912-1998) which sold for £200. There were also two oil on board paintings by the well-known Lincoln artist, Gill Nadin (1928-1996) which sold for £80 each. Both dated 1976, the first painting was titled ‘Welches Dam – Early Morning I’ and the second, ‘Early Morning II’.

A watercolour of a country house with a lake and figures in the foreground, which was thought to be Sudbrooke Hall in Lincolnshire, sold for £600. The work, which was dated 1836 and signed by the artist, Thomas Miles Richardson (1784-1848), sold to a collector from the Lincoln area against fierce competition from a bidder in the room.

A watercolour of Lincoln from the West Common, signed and dated 1976, by Len Roope (1917-2005) sold for £160, against an estimate of £80 to £120.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth-century section, topographical works achieved very high prices as collectors in their country of origin follow the trend of buying them back from abroad.

Two works by the Malaysian artist, Abdullah Ariff (1904-1965) attracted bidders from Malaysia and others on the Internet and in the room. Both pictures carried the artist’s address in Penang on the back and sold for £3,400 against estimates of between £800 and £1,200. The first was a signed watercolour titled ‘Harbour Scene with Boats and Figures’ and the second was a watercolour, ‘Oxen, Cart and Figure’.

The artist Ariff ran art classes in Penang and painted in the mid-twentieth century in an Anglo style. He is now a very considered artist who influenced Malaysian culture and Western art.

Two pictures of Hong Kong Harbour also achieved good prices. A watercolour of the harbour with a liner, fishing smacks and a railway track in landscape by the early twentieth century Anglo-Chinese artist, Ling sold for £1,000 against an estimate of between £200 and £300. Meanwhile, a watercolour of the harbour with masted ships and figures on the shoreline by an artist from the nineteenth-century British School attracted four telephone bidders and finally sold to an Internet bidder for £2,200.

The highlight of the sale was an eighteenth to nineteenth century oil on canvas of a ‘Colonial Coastal Settlement’, probably in South America, which outstripped all expectations to sell for £26,000 after competition from three telephone bidders.

The nineteenth century and modern section of the sale featured many pictures consigned by a private collector from Nottinghamshire and began with a signed oil on board titled ‘Beach Scene’ by Fred Yates (1922-2008) which sold to a telephone bidder for £1,200.



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