WORKS by Scottish Colourists sold for more than £4.5 million as auction estimates shattered.
The Harrison Collection, assembled by artists’ patron and friend Major Ion Harrison, sold for more than expected as it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London.
The sale set a new auction record for artist FCB Cadell, whose Reflection work of 1915, pictured, left, sold for £874,000.
It had been valued at £400,000-£600,000.
The White Room, another Cadell oil painting from the same year, fetched more than double its estimate.
The auction house described the 30-piece collection – which also included items from Samuel John Peploe, George Leslie Hunter, John Duncan Fergusson and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell – as “one of the most exceptional” of its kind in private ownership.
It had been passed through the Harrison family and until recently remained at Croft House, the Glasgow home where the shipping magnate welcomed the artists.
At the time, the French-inspired creatives were rewriting the rules of visual art and were regarded as amongst the most daring painters in the UK.
Businessman Harrison became a fan after his friend Dr John Thomas Honeyman, who went on to become director of the Glasgow Art Gallery, urged to him to take in an exhibition.
He later commented that he “had never seen anything in art similar to these pictures”.
Prior to the sale, Sotheby’s Scottish art specialist Thomas Podd, who viewed it before its removal from Croft House, praised the collection.
Recalling “an experience that will live long in the memory”, he explained: “One’s eye was instantly drawn to Cadell’s The Drawing Room, Croft House hanging in the very same room it depicts, with the majority of furniture and artworks unchanged some 80 years later.”
Podd went on: “It is hard to imagine a work that encapsulates so perfectly the spirit of an entire collection.
“With its balanced composition and sophisticated application of colour, the painting is not only the ultimate Colourist statement, but it speaks also about the collector and his friendship with the artists whose works lined the walls of his beautiful home.”
In a statement, the auction house said: “The pictures in
the Harrison Collection represent such a broad range of styles, subjects and dates by all of
the four Colourists that they present an opportunity to
assess the differing influences
and themes that link them together or contrast them.”
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