No. 1

Lot 43: Angela Conner (British B. 1935), Counterpoise, Onyx marble dust suspended in resin and stainless steel | Est. £7,000-10,000 (+ fees)

"I first came across Angela Conner when cataloguing the Tate’s Barbara Hepworth collection and we set out to interview all of her surviving assistants, of which Angela was one. I especially admire her kinetic works that use air and water to make hefty great bits of stone move as if they’re as light as a feather."

No. 2

Lot 57: λ Peter Lanyon (British 1918-1964), In Stone, Ink, watercolour, crayon and charcoal | Est. £1,500-2,000 (+ fees)

"I’ve done a lot of work on Lanyon and I especially like the group of late gouaches that incorporate fragments of rubbed text. Many, like this one, derive from a gravestone or similar ancient carving but at least one was taken from a Texan car number plate."

No. 3

Lot 59: λ Denis Mitchell (British 1912-1993), Carnvallow, Bronze | Est. £15,000-25,000 (+ fees)

"I think Mitchell is much under-rated and it’s time we took another look at his best work. He was an excellent craftsman and his bronzes that incorporate polished and patinated surfaces and which reference the landscape through the tension of their forms and the titles were hard-won through strenuous graft."

No. 4

Lot 63: λ Sir Terry Frost (British 1915-2003), Three Graces, Collage | Est. £600-800 (+ fees)

"I wrote a little book on Terry Frost and got to know him and his work pretty well. The three graces were a recurring theme for him and, as you can see here, he enjoyed playing with the abstract forms whilst still suggesting the presence of three scantily-clad female figures."

No. 5

Lot 65: λ Sven Berlin (British 1911-1999), Self-portrait with construction, Pencil | Est. £200-300 (+ fees)

"My main area of research has been around St Ives artists, as my choices here probably show, and this drawing really captures a key aspect of that phenomenon and a particular moment. Sven was an arch romantic set against pure abstraction and here he seems to be caught up in one of the constructions that his colleague and rival Peter Lanyon had been making at the time whilst on active service with the RAF."

No. 6

Lot 90: Philip Wilson Steer (British 1860-1942), Strand-on-the-Green, Oil on panel | Est. £6,000-8,000 (+ fees)

"Steer is an intriguing character who seems rather to have dropped out of the narrative of British art. At one time he was seen as a key English Impressionist though he later produced much more traditional landscapes. I love the bold, loose abstraction of this image which is extraordinary for 1893 and anticipates, to my mind, the work of Frank Auerbach seventy years later."

No. 7

Lot 92: Walter Richard Sickert (British 1860-1942), The Rialto Bridge, Oil on canvas | Est. £100,000-150,000 (+ fees)

"We respond to works of art for all sorts of different, personal reasons. I love Sickert’s pictures of Venice largely because I adore Venice, as he clearly did. He captures the beauty and the melancholy of the city. I have been many times and if the artist had turned 90 degrees to the right, he could have painted the building where my wife and I were married years ago."

No. 8

Lot 138: λ Denis Bowen (British/South African 1921-2006), Red Lava (I), Mixed media | Est. £600-800 (+ fees)

"Denis was a real character and I always suspected his personality prevented him from being as recognised by the art establishment as he deserved. As well as an excellent painter, he was a truly ground-breaking gallerist introducing to 1950s London such artists as Piero Manzoni and Yves Klein. I might well have seen this painting in the studio as I was visiting around 1993; I always enjoyed the way he used his abstract techniques to evoke a cosmic environment."

No. 9

Lot 142: λ Anwar Jalal Shemza (British 1928-1985), Painting 1959, Oil on canvas | Est. £20,000-30,000 (+ fees)

"I was slow to know about Shemza’s work and so am interested in the reasons for its years of neglect. Its combination of the languages of post-war European abstraction and of his native Pakistan and Muslim culture now seems so powerful it is hard to think why it took so long for it to be properly recognised and celebrated."

No. 10

Lot 192: λ Maurice Cockrill (British 1936-2013), Landscape at 4 a.m., Oil on canvas | Est. £800-1,200 (+ fees)

"Soon after I first moved to London, I worked for a short time at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery, then in Clifford Street. Maurice was one of the artists showing there at that time and this could well have been one of the paintings that arrived during my six months. His landscapes, that seem to combine actuality and fantasy, are always so beautifully rendered, he really did handle his material in a beautiful and evocative way."

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Auction Details

Thursday 11 July, 10.30am BST
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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