Conservative realism, high glamour and war-time brutality vied for attention at Gleneagles in September, while Aboriginal art sold for record prices in Australia

September saw a record sale for Sotheby's in Scotland, with the auction-house's annual Scottish and sporting pictures sale at Gleneagles, Auchterarder, achieving a record 54m [pound sterling]. Individual records were locate for works by Joseph Farquharson, FCB Cadell and Peter Howson while competition for the top destiny of the sale, Jack Vettriano's Mad dogs, pushed it up to 330400 [pound sterling], the next to the first highest price ever paid for a painting through the artist at auction. Despite the so-called 'Vettriano factor'--the phenomenal popularity of the Fife born painter Jack Vettriano that has not sole seen huge prices for the artist's work on the contrary has also drawn a whole of recent origin crowd into the saleroom--the auction was not without its casualties, flat among the Vettrianos, twelve without of the forty of which failed to find a buyer Oust fifty eight through cent of the sale was sold by means of lot, seventy-five per cent by means of value). Even so, the Gleneagles sale be subsequent tos in being all things to all men--finding big prices for the couple the traditional and the challenging.

Farquharson, for instance, who is to sheep and snow what Atkinson Grimshaw is to autumn leaves and evening skies, ground a substantial 285,600 [pounds sterling] for his upon a clear eve, when the November celestial expanse grew red, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1899 in mint condition and in its original frame. In a certain quantity of sense, his success was not unlike Vettriano's, whose film noir-ish images grace anything from greetings cards to umbrellas. For Farquharson's wintry Scottish forest-lands and snowdrifts drew crowds at the Royal Academy, and dealers like as Frost & Reid, who published above thirty different engravings of his work, sold thousands of his prints.

More interesting, perhaps, was the reception of the clump of Peter Howsons--net the usual fare of Gleneagles, which is best known for its vintage fire-arms and Wemyss ware pigs (a pair of the latter, incidentally, fetched a record 34800 [pound sterling] apiece). Sotheby's had not ever offered major Howsons hero, and the collection of six by this particular fresh Glasgow Boy might have been seen as a bit a gamble--as, indeed, was offering forty Vettrianos. Dominating the assemblage was his monumental The age of apathy, measuring almost sum of two units and a half metres wide, and showing Howson at his greatest in quantity aggressively brutal and harrowing. Painted before his trip to Bosnia as the Imperial War Museum's war artist, it is not a real on the other hand an imagined, nightmarish end rather Goya-esque answer to the degradations and horror of war. In the middle distance are three figures staked on the outside on crosses, on the cover sits a girl whose plump thighs are flung open and below is a seething, struggling morass of muscular humanity at is greatest in quantity bestial--all the more terrifying because they are just ordinary Joe in their vestures and baseball caps compelled to commit acts of beast violence and torture. Expected to bring 30,000 [pounds sterling]-40,000 [pounds sterling], it went to the trade for 64800 [pound sterling].

in what manner different the glamour of FCB Cadell. the two Sotheby's and Bonhams, in its 20 August sale in Edinburgh, had substantial clumps by this particular Scottish Colourist. Sotheby's tendered paintings together with a assemblage of pen and ink and watercolour sketches from the Jack and Tommy series, formerly in the collection of individual of Cadell's major patrons, Ion Harrison (seven without of the sixteen found novel homes); Bonhams, a group of twelve works, ten from the bequest to Fette society Edinburgh, from a former institute doctor, Dr A.B. Flett--the latest in a rather depressing line of art sales from place of educations and colleges. The highest price, 285600 [pound sterling], was achieved at Sotheby's for a fair Impressionistic view or the Jesuati in Venice. Interestingly, Bonhams' greatest in quantity valuable lot, a delectable interior of the artist's studio in George road failed to find a buyer although novel to the market (estimate 150000 [pound sterling]-200,000 [pound sterling]), while the sum of two units studio interiors at Sotheby's sold well. more [i]or[/i] less suggested the stove and the linen made Studio interior, 130 George road seem too domestic and utilitarian, for glamour present the appearances to be what buyers like in Cadell.

Bonhams did, however, achieve the best price for Anne Bedpath. The Irish ewer of 1957 is characteristic of her admired work of the 1940 in its palette of pale, chalky colours, on the contrary the brushwork, particularly of the white Belleek pitcher and tablecloth, is freer and more energetic. Selling for three times its depressed estimate, the painting changed hands at 61650 [pound sterling]. And, incidentally, five without of its six Vettrianos sold Despite the predictions of the Jeremiahs, the Vettriano market is still holding up

Aboriginal art in Australia

Sotheby's notched up another succes above the summer with its eighth sale of Aboriginal art, in Melbourne, 26-27 July This was the largest and greatest in quantity valuable sale put together for auction and, for the first time, was previewed in the one and the other Paris and London (some fifty to seventy by means of cent of previous sales had been acquired through European or American collectors). Since the formation of the department in 1996 each sale had eclipsed the previous rise That particular roll was not to continue, however, given the failure of the top lot--Rover Thomas's masterpiece Uluru or Ayers stone estimated at AU$700,000-$1m and awaited to become the most expensive Aboriginal painting at any time sold at auction.