T his November, Sotheby's is delighted to present British & Irish Art week, led by the flagship live sale of Modern British & Irish art at 2:00 PM on 23 November. With our online sales of Scottish, Irish and Modern British Art all on view, the week showcases some of the greatest artist working in Britain and Ireland from the 19th to the 21st century. To celebrate this week, please join us on Sunday 20 and Monday 21 November for a series of free curated talks with artists, curators and historians which explore Britain's avant-garde artistic heritage and celebrate the launch of Jo Baring’s new collection of essays Revisiting Modern British Art published by Lund Humphries in October 2022.
This November's online sale of Modern British Art is led by exceptional sculpture, from modernist pieces by Henry Moore, to examples of the 'Geometry of Fear' group including Lynn Chadwick and Kenneth Armitage, as well as a wonderful range of works by Elisabeth Frink. Other highlights in the sale include a group of Bloomsbury pieces by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, neo -romantic paintings by Graham Sutherland, works on paper by Roger Hilton from the collection of Grey Gowrie, an exceptional Cedric Morris and superb examples of post-war British abstraction by Paul Feiler, Terry Frost and Patrick Heron.
Grey Gowrie bought his first painting by Roger Hilton in the late 1950s and began to collect his work obsessively: ‘the personality governing the art is so strong that whether or not you really want to, you are forced into a relationship with it. You come to live with a demanding, difficult but infinitely rewarding friend: certainly one one cannot ignore or shake off’. He was later asked to speak at the opening of Hilton’s exhibition at Tate St Ives in 2006 and concluded: ‘Hilton applies oil like a caress. In this he is closer to Manet than Cezanne, though if you see his work in reproduction only, you might feel he had passed through Cezanne’s hands like, perhaps, two thirds of twentieth century artists working in oil. Then there is Hilton’s line, his handwriting, evident in all the drawings as well as in the rare and remarkable way he can endow paintings in intractable oil with the speed and fluidity of drawing as de Kooning can, or Cy Twombly can. I have discovered through another collector that when a Hilton drawing or gouache is in the room only Picasso is so compelling, so draws the eye. Like the Ancient Mariner, Roger fixes you with his ancient glittering line…’
Born in Ireland, the Earl of Gowrie (1939 – 2021) was a politician, collector and poet. He was Margaret Thatcher’s Minister of State for the Arts and later Chairman of Sotheby’s and the Arts Council of England.
Join us in our New Bond Street galleries on Sunday 20 and Monday 21 November for a series of free curated talks with artists, curators and historians which explore Britain's avant-garde artistic heritage and celebrate the launch of Jo Baring’s new collection of essays Revisiting Modern British Art published by Lund Humphries in October 2022.
