Watercolours
A painting method that employs pigment suspended in a water-based solution, usually applied onto paper.
Though its earliest origins are thought to be prehistoric, its history is usually dated from the Renaissance, when it was used by artists such as Albrecht Durer.
While it may be used as for the creation of preparatory studies, it is also an art form in its own right, and is a technique used for botanical illustration, wildlife illustration and topographical painting as well as traditional genres, particularly landscape.
Promised Land fulfils its promise at £13,800
16 October 2003Exceptional subjects still have the capacity to fetch exceptional prices, as the Bury St Edmunds auctioneers Lacy Scott & Knight (10% buyer’s premium) discovered when this unsigned and unattributed 19th century watercolour came under the hammer on September 20 with an estimate of £250-400.
£4200 picture of contentment
26 August 2003The strong collecting base for miniatures has cushioned this market from the wider economic vagaries that have affected other more trade-dependent fields such as furniture and silver. Bonhams Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) specialist Emma Rutherford reckoned around 80 per cent of entries sold privately in their 193-lot routine miniature and silhouettes sale back on July 1. “Our buyers tend to be retired and tend to have their money readily accessible,” she said.
Pooh, Piglet and Toad the washerwoman
30 June 2003A watercolour and drawings sale held by Bonhams on June 10 included a small group of E.H. Shepard illustrations from the estate of the late Jean Ames, who as Jean Gourlay had befriended the artist during the late 1930s and early 1940s, prior to his second marriage, and though the saleroom was non-committal on the matter, it is possible that these versions were specially made by Shepard for Miss Ames.
Hoskins sells at £17,500
08 May 2003Not such a pretty face, perhaps, but the artist was certainly worth a thousand dollars or more.
HBP’s bunnies in the snow raise £32,000
17 April 2003Two early watercolour drawings of rabbits in snowy settings were offered as part of a Bonhams sale of April 1. That seen right shows one rabbit making a snowball while another leans on a fence, while in the illustration reproduced below right, the two rabbits are building a snowman.
Multi-million pound deal struck in row over Blake watercolours folio
14 February 2003A secondhand bookshop in Glasgow and two Yorkshire dealers are celebrating a windfall of several million pounds after settling their dispute over the ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours. The folio of 19 illustrations for Robert Blair’s poem, The Grave, one of the most exciting “finds” in art market history, have been sold through London art dealer Libby Howie, acting on behalf of an anonymous collector, for an estimated £4.9m.
Lears saved
10 February 2003CHRISTIE’S have negotiated the sale of a major collection of watercolours of Greece by Edward Lear to the nation in lieu of tax. The 32 pictures come from the estate of the late Sir Steven Runciman and are expected to go the National Galleries of Scotland.
Dispute keeps lost Blakes under cover
09 September 2002A second hand bookshop in Glasgow and two dealers are locked in a legal dispute over the ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours, valued at over £1m.
Value leap is par for the course
27 August 2002Golf has always been a subject that can have a dramatic effect on the price levels of artists who normally make little impact in the salerooms. Take the case of Frank Watson Wood (1862-1953), a Berwick-on-Tweed watercolourist who specialised in landscapes and marines, the best examples of which fetch around £1500 at auction.
Sir Henry’s timely bow
14 August 2002WITH the Proms season now upon us it seems fitting that a portrait of the founder of the famous concerts, Sir Henry Wood, topped the pictures on offer at Bonhams Oxford (17.5% buyer’s premium) on June 25.
A peace mission in watercolour
07 August 2002FRANCE: Millon & Associés (17.5/ 13.5% buyer’s premium) June 26 sale included two watercolours taken from an album of drawings by Eugene Delacroix, which the artist presented to Count Charles de Mornay on their return from Morocco in 1832.
£12,500 Nelson outranks artist
17 July 2002In the portrait miniature market the sitter is considered less important than the painter – but sometimes even a famous artist like Henry Bone, enamellist to the Prince Regent and the author of this miniature, right, can be superseded by their subject.
The indomitable Herr Kerner and his 144 bunches of grapes…
05 July 2002It is believed that only two copies of Johann Simon Kerner’s Le Raisin, ses espèces et variétées… were completed, but then this German botanist did make it hard work for himself in choosing to illustrate it with original watercolours.
Prince Charles watercolours unmasked as forgeries after sale
24 June 2002FELLOWS and Sons, the Birmingham auctioneers, have refunded the buyers of three watercolours sold as the work of Prince Charles last week after the pictures were revealed as forgeries.
The ladies take the honours
19 June 2002Back on April 9 and 10 Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) Bond Street rooms offered a double helping of portrait miniatures on consecutive days: a 165-lot single owner and a 133-lot mixed-vendor sale, both of which saw around three-quarters of their contents get away.
Portrait miniature makes £200,000
13 June 2002This portrait miniature of a 30-year-old lady by Nicholas Hilliard, dated 1582, set a new auction record for the artist at Sotheby’s Olympia rooms on June 6 when it sold to a private collector bidding on the phone against the room for £200,000 (plus premium).
Venus puts buyers on 17th century watch
17 April 2002Two small locally consigned lots provided the best seller and cover lot at the buoyant March 23 sale held by Michael J. Bowman (15% buyer’s premium) at Chudleigh Town Hall.
The coming woman – and one to watch out for
17 April 2002THE names of two women artists, one very well known, the other undeservedly obscure, provided talking points at two provincial sales in March.
Diary of despair
03 April 2002The brutality and horror of everyday life in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp can be seen in a collection of pen, ink and watercolour sketches to be offered on April 16 at Bonhams, New Bond Street’s sale of topographical pictures.
Simmering Sibby
03 April 2002This previously undiscovered miniature on ivory of Lincolnshire dignitary Charles De Laet Waldo-Sibthorp is expected to take up to £2000 when it is offered for sale on April 24 at the Lincoln rooms of Thomas Mawer & Sons.
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