The Steeple Times selects the highlights of Masterpiece 2019
Eighty-one of the finest items of James Bond memorabilia
£2.5 million ($3.2 million, €2.8 million or درهم11.6 million)
Fulham Road based Peter Harrington offer the ultimate collection for a wealthy James Bond fan. To be sold only as a single lot, it includes every lifetime edition of the books signed by Ian Fleming along with manuscripts, pre-publication proofs, advance copies and related correspondence and ephemera. Amongst them is one dedicated to Sir Winston Churchill. In it, he makes reference to the victorious wartime Prime Minister’s Thoughts and Adventures and states: “To Sir Winston Churchill, From whom I stole some words.”
Climb Out (1964)
£330,000 ($416,000, €368,000 or درهم1.5 million)
Steven Beale, Simon Mills and their colleagues at Trinity House are undoubtedly amongst the most welcoming of dealers at Masterpiece. With galleries in London, the Cotswolds and America, they offer an array of artworks and this year’s delights include an oil, polystyrene and wood on canvas work painted as part of his ‘Glider Series’ by Peter Lanyon (1918 – 1964) just before he died in a gliding accident. Of the work, Mills comments: “This Cornish artist’s prices have been increasing for some time with one work making over £1m last year.” Of why he took to the sky, Lanyon once remarked: “To get a more complete knowledge of the landscape.”
An interlocking, overlapping limestone circle sculpture
Offered for £30,000 ($38,000, €33,000 or درهم139,000) and now sold
Crane Kalman – best known for being the leading dealer of Lowry – sold this stunning sculpture by greengrocer turned artist Tom Stogdon on the first day of the fair. With this naturalistic work destined for a Gloucestershire garden, the artist remarks: “I often wonder how life would have been if I had gone to art school instead of the market but always arrive at the same conclusion… Who really knows? … I am striving to create my own individual language with the way I use material and in particular stone.”
Road on the Moors – Gloucester (1919)
Price on application
Each year New York based Collisart, LLC’s stand is filled with fascinating examples of 19th and 20th century American art and this year is no exception. Continuing with another work connected to the Cotswolds, this bold oil on canvas is titled ‘Road on the Moors – Gloucester’ by Stuart Davis (1892 – 1964). It certainly reflects this American modernist painter’s positivity and optimism and has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Koriyama City Museum of Art.
Models in Windows (1960)
£44,000 ($55,000, €48,000 or درهم202,000)
Santa Monica photography dealer Peter Fetterman Gallery brings vibrancy to the fair with an image of 43 women standing in the windows and on the sidewalk of an about to be demolished (the next day) New York brownstone. Shot only after photographer Ormond Gigli agreed for the demolition supervisor’s wife to be included (she is on the third floor, third from left), it is described as representing a “rhythmic composition of colour and form” and a “slice in time.”
Masterpiece is held in the South Grounds of The Royal Hospital Chelsea, London. The fair closes today, Wednesday 3rd July, at 9pm.
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