Private Dorset art collection leads sale – Antique Collecting

A Somerset auction house is hoping that an interesting selection of pictures in their upcoming Fine Art Sale will attract the bidders in January.

Lawrences said that six exceptional works from a private collection in Dorset show the late owner’s breadth of taste, including a skilful still life of a cut pie with a lemon, glassware and a nautilus shell upon a dish ascribed to the Dutch master Willem Claesz. Heda (1594-1680). This oil on panel, exemplifying the Dutch love of textures and composition, bears a signature and date (1642) and is expected to make £10,000-15,000.

A fine scene of a greenhouse, supposedly at Weston Park, Staffordshire, by William Hodges (1744-1797) was exhibited in 1772 and widely referenced in literature from the 1770s onwards. This is estimated at £6,000-8,000.

A small but atmospheric twilight scene by the Dutch master Aert van der Neer (1603-1677) depicts shipping in an estuary at sundown and this 19 x 34cm panel is estimated at £6,000-8,000.

Three further highlights from the same collection comprise superb oils by Eugene Boudin (1824-1898), the French master of beach scenes, marines and skies. Having trained under Jean Francois Millet, his love of painting outdoors led to his encouraging a young Claude Monet to do likewise. Boudin exhibited with the Impressionists in their first exhibition in 1874 and he is considered to be the vital transitional figure between the Romanticism of Corot and `La Vie Moderne` as shown by the Impressionists. The three pictures, depicting boats and bustling life at Deauville, Trouville and on the River Touques range from £12,000-18,000 to £25,000-35,000 apiece.

Elsewhere, a fine copy of Theodor Rombouts’ Lute Player of 1620, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is estimated at £6,000-8,000; and an 1834 variant by Devon artist Thomas Luny (1759-1837) of his famous Wreck of the Dutton in 1786 shows the brave and enterprising Edward Pellew ensuring that the men on board got safely ashore in tempestuous seas, estimated at £4,000-6,000.

The sale’s more modern subjects also show variety. A 100x 75cm oil of Bath before Bedtime by the Scottish artist Robert Gemmell Hutchison (1855-1936) depicts an informal scene with a mother holding an exhausted baby in her arms. Much influenced by Dutch masters of the Hague School, the picture captures the honest, affectionate toil of rural Scottish life in the early years of the 20th century, estimated at £6,000-9,000.

From further south, an oil by Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929) of shipping at Falmouth was probably painted from the artist’s floating studio, the ‘Julie of Nantes’. This subject captures the rather bleak and wintry wind that can beset the Channel waters and owes something to Eugene Boudin, too. It is estimated at £7,000-9,000.

Three modern drawings are by Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956), an artist with a profound love of the supernatural and a belief in the power of automatism in determining his intriguing subjects. Wandering Lust, Blood on the Moon and The Evolution of the Human Race carry estimates of between £3,000 and 7,000 apiece.

A joyful abstract work by Sir Terry Frost of Suspended Forms from c.1972 shows the artist’s concern with trying to align colour and form without resorting to conventional representational motifs. This collage of cut canvases was acquired from the artist by the vendor’s late father and has not been seen in public for over 50 years. The abstract is estimated at £3,000-5,000.