Art Market

When it comes to the business of selling middle-market collections, the big London salerooms are particularly adept at cherry-picking the best and rejecting the rest.

Topographical watercolours may not be the hottest area of the art market, but they can still pack a punch in the saleroom.

Experimental work by the Czech Expressionist Ernest Neuschul (1895-1968) chimed with current tastes in a sell-out studio sale in Somerset.

This oil painting of the RMS Queen Mary, below, by marine painter William McDowell (1888-1950) was taken to a multi-estimate £12,000 at Surrey saleroom John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium).

Private material sourced from old estates helped Gloucestershire saleroom Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) get the year off to a positive start.

Chiswick Auctions (25/12% buyer’s premium) has held its first dedicated Old Masters sale, capitalising on the void left by Christie’s South Kensington’s closure last year.

A bustling scene of Leicester Square by genre painter Edward Prentis (1797-1854) took £6800 at David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) of Penzance.

This painting of a fire in north London drew heated bidding when it went under the hammer at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

As celebrations get under way to mark the centenary of women gaining the right to vote (or over-30s at least), the Modern British art market is showing a growing appetite for 20th century female artists.

A 19th century painted print of a Maori took top honours at Heliers Auction (18% buyer’s premium) in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Works on paper, not oil paintings, stole the show at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne.

This painting of a saint sold for a multi-estimate £5400 at London Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) in Chiswick.

Modern and contemporary British art racked up £195,000 at a Roseberys (23% buyer’s premium) sale, with 80% of the 252 lots sold.

Traditional ‘country house style’ pictures were in plentiful supply at a two-day sale at Tennants of Leyburn.

Art by a pair of 20th century artists who actively avoided belonging to any artistic school or movement stood out in recent US auctions.

A reminder of the dramatic drop in demand over recent decades for Victorian landscapes was evident in Gloucestershire where two such oils by Sidney Richard Percy (1822-86) went under the hammer.

A small painting by Scottish artist Robert Gemmell Hutchison (1855- 1936) took a mid-estimate £6000 at Surrey saleroom John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium).

A pastel portrait of a fashionable young Georgian woman in an ostrich feather hat and blue coat with her dog topped the picture section at Lincolnshire saleroom Golding Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium).

An 1894 pencil drawing of a street in Antwerp by Walter Frederick Osborne (1859-1903) was among the last contents offered at auction from West Horsley Place, the Grade I-listed mansion in Surrey owned by historian and broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne.

Paintings by lesser-known Pre-Raphaelites took the honours at the latest Victorian art sales held at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9%) and Christie’s (25/20/12.5%).