Sir Michael Craig-Martin screenprints in sale

A pair of vibrant screenprints by Sir Michael Craig-Martin (b.1941) is coming up in a North Yorkshire saleroom this week.

Tennants Auctioneers’ Modern and Contemporary Art Sale on February 26 will include Deconstructing Seurat (blue), with an estimate of £1,200-1,800. Craig-Martin has led the Conceptual Art movement in Britain since the mid-1960s and has been an inspiration to a younger generation of British Artists through his works as a highly influential teacher at Goldsmiths.

Also on offer is Scarlet Ibises by the renowned wildlife artist and illustrator Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe (1901-1979), estimated at £2,000-3,000. The watercolour was exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1970, where it was purchased by the current vendor, and is being sold with a page from the exhibition catalogue and correspondence between the vendor and the artist about the painting.

Other notable lots in the sale include The Baker’s Wife II by Paula Rego (b.1935), estimated at £800-1,200, and Cricket, perhaps the most widely recognised linocut by Grosvenor School artist Edith Lawrence (1890-1973), estimated at £3,000-5,000.

A section of Northern Art in the sale is led by unusually large paintings by Stuart Walton who was born in Leeds in 1933. A self-taught artist, he focused on depicting the fast-disappearing Victorian terrace houses, cobbled streets and dark yards of Leeds. His paintings capture the atmosphere of the post-industrial North and his time growing up in the area. Six works by the artist are on offer in the sale, the highlights being Glasshoughton Colliery, estimated at £2,500-4,000, and Landscape, Armley, carrying an estimate of £2,500-4,000.

Frederick Cecil Jones was a Yorkshire painter, etcher, and art teacher who produced extraordinarily detailed townscapes of his native county, that capture the spirit of time, place and people. A record for a painting by Jones was set at Tennants in 2021, when Scarborough was sold for £6,500. Now up for sale is Figures beside rowing boats, Knaresborough, on offer with an estimate of £700-1,000, alongside two further works by the artist. Also of interest to collectors of Northern Art is Geoffrey Key’s Girls and Clouds, offered with an estimate of £3,000-5,000.

Further highlights of the sale include Girl Sitting in a Window by Malcolm Drummond (1889-1945), estimated at £3,000-5,000; Conversation in the Pub by Ruskin Spear (1911-1990), estimated at £2,000-3,000; and Croft by the Sea, South Uist by John Lowrie Morrison “Jolomo” (b.1948), with an estimate of £2,000-3,000.