Lowry leads contemporary art sale

Sales of modern and contemporary art continued to be strong, as witnessed at Yorkshire auction house Tennants‘ recent sale, which also included complimentary lots previously sold in the Fine Art Sales.

The resulted in an overall hammer price of £149,850, with the top lot a Fine Art Trade Guild print by LS Lowry entitled ‘Going to the Match’, which sold for £14,000. Elsewhere, a print of ‘Britain at Play’ sold for a hammer of £4,200 against an estimate of £1,500 to £2,000, while a print of ‘Our Town’ sold for £2,900, against an estimate of £800 to £1,200.

Two other stand-out lots in the sale were paintings by Terence Tenison Cuneo (1907-1996), official artist for the Queen’s Coronation in 1953. Cuneo is best known for his dramatic and detailed paintings of the railway, the military and industry, but a quiet picture of families fishing by a sun-bathed river displaying his adept handling of light sold for £6,800 (plus b.p). Topping that was ‘The Inconsiderate Driver’, which sold for £10,000.

Other notable sales included ‘Flower Form’, a bronze by Austin Wright (1911-1997), which sold for £6,00. Wright was a pivotal figure in the development of British sculpture from the 1940s onwards; his mainly abstract work was strongly influenced by the landscape and fauna of Yorkshire, and large-scale pieces of his work can be seen today in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Strong prices were also seen for works by Brian Shields ‘Braaq’, Peter Brook, Orville Bulman and Ken Howard.