13 December 2023
Lyon & Turnbull
Bidders were transported to the south of France by way of the Scottish Colourists in our 07 December flagship Scottish Paintings & Sculpture auction. Sun-kissed oils by Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell and George Leslie Hunter contributed handsomely to a total of over £1.95 million - one of the best on record - with a selling rate of an impressive 94%.
Unseen in public for two generations, Cassis, le Port by Cadell (1883-1937) sailed away to bring £287,700. Dating from the heyday of his career, in the early 1920s, it brilliantly captures the vibrancy of one of the south of France’s most beautiful waterfronts. Cadell first travelled to Cassis in 1923 and returned in 1924, likening the region to his beloved Iona – but with better weather.
Writing from the Hotel Panorama to his patron George Chiene, he said:
‘This place has several points in common with Iona. The colour and formation of headlands etc and to some extent the sea…instead of, as in Iona, painting against time and trying to get finished before the next squall of rain, I can work as long as I feel disposed on one thing.’
Cadell exhibited and sold his paintings of Cassis to great success, selling 10 pictures in 1923 for prices from £30 to £50 each. The oil on panel Cassis, le Port was on the market for the first time since it was acquired by a private collector in Glasgow between the wars. It sold comfortably above the top estimate.
Cadell’s more modestly sized view of sailboats on the Grand Canal, fluently painted on the spot during a trip to Venice in 1910, sold at £72,700. The visit, sponsored by his school friend and politician, Sir Patrick Ford, proved to be a turning-point in the artist’s career, freeing his technique and encouraging an interest in reflections that became a defining characteristic of Cadell’s work. Venice formerly belonged to the ship-owner George Service, one of Cadell’s most important patrons, who eventually acquired some 150 of his works.
John Maclauchlan Milne (1885-1957) is often dubbed the ‘Fifth Colourist’ and it is especially in his French paintings that the clear link with his better-known contemporaries is made. Wine Boats, St Tropez is a tremendous example of Maclauchlan Milne’s work in the French riviera. He painted here regularly from 1919 until 1932, returning to his base in Dundee to exhibit and sell his creations. The painting offered was acquired directly from the artist by Jack Lipsey of Glasgow in 1956 and came by descent to the present owner. Guided at £40,000-£60,000, it took £93,950.
A striking prime-period still life by the Scottish Colourist Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935) sold for £225,200. Still Life with Tulips dates from the immediate post-war period, before Peploe settled into the rose still lifes which he painted, exhibited and sold in great numbers during the 1920s. He chose to depict this arrangement - a fan, glass vase and red, yellow and lilac blooms often bought from stalls on Edinburgh’s Princes Street – upon a white tablecloth set in front of a sheer black background. Bold in technique, colour and design it was particularly admired for superb passages such as the rendering of the translucency of water in the vase and its reflection of the artist’s studio beyond.
One of the most eagerly-contested pictures in the sale was Girl with Fan by William Strang (1859-1921), a portrait study in gold, purple, pink and green that was at once truthful to its subject, highly stylish and enigmatic in atmosphere. Strang did not always name his sitters, but the subject here is thought to be his daughter Nancy who, the following year, posed for his famous work The Opera Cloak. Last sold in 2014 when it brought £16,000, it was presented here with a guide of £15,000-£20,000 and took £53,950 – a new auction record for the artist.
In the equivalent sale of Scottish art last year, Lyon & Turnbull set an auction record for the work of Joan Eardley (1921-63) when The Yellow Jumper commanded £200,200. This season’s sale included another of her singular portrayals of the children of the Townhead district of Glasgow. The intimate oil on board, Portrait of Jimmie, depicts one of the Samson siblings who would often sit in return for drawing paper and a few pence to spend at the sweet shop. Included in the Joan Eardley exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland in 2007-08, it made £45,200.
Works by Glasgow Girl Bessie MacNicol – who died in childbirth in 1904 - are represented in multiple public collections but are rare to come to the market.
The Lilac Sunbonnet, a highly assured oil on canvas of a fresh-faced girl dressed in light flowing fabrics from 1899, was painted when MacNicol had acquired a studio on St Vincent Street in Glasgow and was earning favourable comparisons with her male contemporaries. At her funeral, the all-male Glasgow Art Club members’ tribute praised her as ‘a true artist’ while in in his 1908 book, Scottish Painting Past and Present, James Caw, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, called MacNicol ‘probably the most accomplished lady-artist that Scotland has yet produced’. The Lilac Sunbonnet became one of the top-priced pictures by the artist, selling at £55,200.
Among the earlier Scottish pictures, Nick Curnow noted strong demand for portraits. Works by both Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) performed well with Ramsay’s pair of half-length profile portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte selling some distance above predictions at £77,700. Ramsay befriended a young Prince of Wales in 1757 with a portrait deemed so life-like and accurate that a life-long association developed between the men. This pair of pendant portraits were commissioned in around 1761 (the year of George III’s Coronation) for use in designing coinage for the British Empire.
The new King is presented in dignified regal splendour wearing the star and ribbon of the Garter, his hand placed inside a gold-embroidered jacket. Queen Charlotte is equally refined in scarlet, draped in lace and pearls. Recently arrived from Germany, she rests her arm on the second volume of David Hume’s 1757 History of Britain, assuring her subjects of her preparedness for the British Crown.
Sir Henry Raeburn’s intimate half-length portrait of Mrs William Mackenzie sold at £27,700.
Head of Sale Nick Curnow was delighted to be joined by multiple bidders in the Edinburgh saleroom.
“The view from the rostrum was of a busy saleroom, with plentiful phone bidding and online participation and a happy return to pre-lockdown levels of in-person attendance.”
All results are inclusive of buyer’s premium.
