Demand buoyant in Oxfordshire picture sale
An atmospheric watercolour by the British artist Alfred William Hunt (1830-1896) was the top performing lot in a recent picture sale in Oxfordshire.
Signed and dated 1857, The Langdale Pikes clearly captured the imagination of bidders with the price soaring ever upwards, eventually selling for £8,200 to an online trade bidder in the UK.
Dorothea Sharp is best known for her landscapes and depictions of children playing and the sale featured an oil painting attributed to this artist. As a great example of Sharp’s work, featuring children playing with a toy boat in the Tuileries Garden, Paris, the work was inscribed to the reverse in pencil and dated 1945. It was estimated at £3,000-£5,000 but strong competition pushed it above this estimate, with a final, winning bid of £7,800 coming from a UK commission bidder.
A striking, 18th-century Dutch school oil painting of a harbourside town with windmills, fishing boats and a cathedral, also performed well, selling for £4,000 against a £2,000-£3,000 estimate.
A large, still life by British artist Frederick Victor Bailey (1919-1997) proved popular amongst bidders. Signed and dated 1979, it featured a vase of mixed flowers with grapes and nuts alongside and achieved almost three times top estimate when the hammer fell at £2,200.
Two other 20th-century paintings of note were a watercolour entitled The Farm on the Hill by Stanley Anderson (1884-1966), estimated at £700-£900; and a striking watercolour of a Nuthatch by Basil Ede (1931-2016), estimated at £200-£300. Both achieved hammer prices of £1,900.