This is Roseberys first Specialist sale combining Modern British Art with artworks by international artists from across the 20th century. The auction will take place across two days on Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 October The first day of the sale will include lots 1 to 240 and the second will consist of 241 to 520.
“We are delighted with the quality of works across the sale, from classic Modern British names, such as Christopher Nevinson, Patrick Heron and Elizabeth Blackadder, alongside European masters Antoni Clave and Afro Basaldello and international figure Ben Enwonwu.”
- William Summerfield, Head of Sale and Specialist Modern British & 20th Century Art
Lot 149: Patrick Heron, Still Life with Hyacinths, Plaice and Lemon, 1946
This beautiful early composition by Patrick Heron shows the artists exploring a subjective use of colour, influenced by Pierre Bonnard, that he would hone and simplify in his celebrated mature abstraction. Heron has also experimented with a complex arrangement of space, which was inspired by the work of George Braque, seen here in the flattened form of the table offset with lines incised into the paint, to disrupt the traditional picture plane.
Lot 149 has an extraordinary provenance, passing between two great patrons of Post-War British art, J.P. Hodin and Howard Bliss.
Josef Paul Hodin (1905-1995) was an important art historian, who wrote on figures including Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and John Milne. Hodin lived between London and Cornwall, becoming friendly with the artists in St. Ives, including Patrick Heron, writing catalogue essays and articles on his work. Howard Bliss (1894-1977) served on the Art Panel for the Arts Council of Great Britain in the 1950s. Between 1951-52 the Arts Council organised travelling loan exhibition of his collection, to enable people outside of London to see and appreciate Modern art.
Lot 269: Dame Elizabeth Blackadder DBE RA RSA RSW,Lilies, 1983
Lot 270: Dame Elizabeth Blackadder DBE RA RSA RSW, Interior, 1971
These two early watercolours demonstrate Dame Elizabeth Blackadder’s careful balance of colour and composition, allowing the abstract qualities of the medium to create a transcendental sense to the image. Blackadder was the first woman to be elected as an academician to the Royal Academy in London and the Royal Scottish Academy. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is now held in all major public UK collections, including the Tate, National Galleries of Scotland and the Government Art Collection.
‘Lilies, 1983’ was purchased from the Mercury Gallery in the 1980s and has been in the same private collection ever since. The artist and her husband John Houston were highly influenced by their travels in Japan in the 1980s, in particular for Blackadder, in the Zen principles of empty space, and this shows an early example of her experimenting in the way the still life objects are carefully placed across an expanse of pure colour. We are fortunate to also have a sensational large still life painting (Lot 363) by John Houston.
Lot 363: John Houston OBE RSA, Flowers at a Window, Summer 1989, 1989
Lot 77: Anne Redpath ARA ARWS RSA, Still Life with Staffordshire Figure, 1955
Lot 27: Frank Dobson RA, Seated Nude, c.1935
An important work ‘Interior, 1971’ comes to Roseberys from the Estate of the late designer Anthony Powell. The artist created an number of such interior scenes at the beginning of the 1970s.Other works from the Anthony Powell Estate include ‘Abstract, 1968’ by Alan Davie, ‘Still Life with Staffordshire Figure, 1955’ by Anne Redpath (Lot 77) and works by Mary Potter, Bernard Dunstan and Frank Dobson amongst others. Powell was acclaimed for his costume designs for stage and film, winning Academy Awards for his work on for ‘Travels with my Aunt, 1972’, ‘Death on the Nile, 1978’ and ‘Tess, 1979’.
Lot 196: Carel Weight CH CBE RA,The Argument
We are extremely fortunate to have works by Carel Weight (1908-1997) and his circle, including an early portrait by Jean Cooke (1927-2008) and major works by John Bratby.
Carel Weight was a major figure in British art in the Post-War period, inspiring a generation of artists as Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art. Known for his idiosyncratic style and unusual subject matter, the works on offer include a seminal late portrait of a lady, which is a unique depiction of the dignity of old age, in a world obsessed with youth. Similar works are in the collection of the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (‘The Old Woman in the Garden no.2’) and the Royal Academy of Arts, London (‘The Silence’).
Lot 199: John Bratby RA, The Scrapyard, 1958
Weight was a close friend and mentor to Jean Cooke and John Bratby, who would both create extraordinary portraits and interiors scenes in their work. The pair’s often difficult emotional and creative relationship was a major focus of the Barbican’s recent celebrated exhibition ‘Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65’.
Lot 198: Jean Cooke, Portrait of a Lady with Flowers
Jean Cooke’s Lot 198 portrait is a tender depiction of a young lady, her body morphing into the background and still life composition, reminiscent of the work of Gwen John. This work was originally owned by the architect Leonard Manasseh OBE RA (1916-2017), who was a fellow RA and sat on the selection committee with Cooke for the 1984 RA Summer Exhibition. Cooke exhibited in the 1960s with the Leicester Galleries and her work is now in public collections including the Ruth Borchard Collection, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery and the Tate.
We have a selection of powerful works by John Bratby, including Lot 199 - a rare scrapyard scene from the 1950s and a sensitive drawing of Jean Cooke and one of the pair’s children. Bratby’s work is in all major UK collections.
Lot 164: Ernst Eisenmayer, Cornish Coast II
Lot 167: Ernst Eisenmayer, Head
We are excited to be selling a large collection of works from the estate of artist Ernst Eisenmayer, including paintings and sculptures from the 1950s and 60s. Austrian-born Eisenmayer moved to London to study in 1939, where he was guided and influenced by his fellow countryman, Oskar Kokoscha, living and exhibiting in the UK for many decades, including at the prestigious Majorie Parr Gallery and Leicester Galleries. Works by the artist are in the collection of the Ben Uri Gallery, Peterborough Museum & Art Gallery and King’s Lynn Museum.
Lot 168: Ernst Eisenmayer, Old Couple, 1958
Eisenmayer’s works incorporates the aesthetic qualities of the Post-War period in Britain, most notably that of the so-called Geometry of Fear artists, such as Kenneth Armitage and Lynn Chadwick. His sculptures have an industrial, almost militaristic quality to them, form emerging subtly from the roughly hewn material. Major works are on public display, including at Southlands College, Roehampton and Carlton Forum Leisure Centre, Nottingham.
We are delighted to have two more works by celebrated Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu, following our successful results with Female Form I and Untitled in May last year.
Lot 213: Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu MBE, Woman and Afele
Ben Enwonwu is considered to be one of the most influential and pioneering African artists of the 20th Century. Born in Nigeria in 1917, Enwonwu studied fine art under Kenneth C. Murray at Government College, Nigeria, from 1934 before being awarded a scholarship in 1944 to study in the UK at the Slade School of Fine Arts. During his studies within the UK, the British colonial government employed Enwonwu to create posters for their propaganda campaigns directed towards skilled, colonised Nigerians assisting in the post-war reconstruction efforts within the UK. In many aspects he was presented as a result of the British colonial governments efforts of tutelage in their colonies, however he was also adopted by African activists who considered him a part of Nigeria’s quest for political independence. His unusual position within Western society and back home in Nigeria meant his talent was exploited for multiple parties; evidently he actively contributed to both sides, and his artwork of this period documents his interaction with both contexts. As a result his work is considered to be pioneering and consequently a unique form of African Modernist art.
Lot 214: Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu MBE, Female Form II
Both sculptures are wonderful examples of Enwonwu’s mature style, focusing on the exploration and representation of the human body. Through his carving, Enwonwu masterfully emphasises the qualities of the wood to create smooth and sinuous abstract forms which exude a sense of motion and grace.
Lot 14: Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson ARA.,The Thames, 1911
This rare and early example of Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson’s work was completed during his later years at the Slade School of Art. As a student at the prestigious art school from 1909-1912, Nevinson was part of a new wave of British Art, studying alongside Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, David Bomberg, William Roberts and Adrian Allinson, whilst building close friendships with Mark Gertler and Dora Carrington.
During this period at the Slade, Nevinson’s style was predominantly in the Impressionist format (noticeable in Lot 14), with close associations to the French Impressionists and Post Impressionists.
In his 1937 autobiography, he mentions that he often sketched in the Impressionist manner by the banks of the Thames while he was a student at the St John’s Wood School of Art (1908-09), this possibly suggests the work on offer may be as a result of an earlier sketch.
Very few paintings of this period have been located, making this oil a unique example of the artist’s early style. The composition closely resembles ‘The Railway Bridge, Charenton’, completed in the same year, now held at Manchester Art Gallery. The handling of the paint and impastoed surface on both works are similar, capturing a fleeting moment along the banks of the river. Nevinson cleverly explores the play of light on moving water in the present work, whilst capturing an everyday scene from contemporary society, void of any specific narrative.
Lot 115: Antoni Clavé, Stage design for Roland Petit's 'Carmen', c.1949
This dynamic work by Antoni Clave is an original stage design for Roland Petit’s ballet from Georges Bizet’s opera ‘Carmen’, first performed in London at the Prince’s Theatre in 1949. This celebrated production was renowned for its Spanish style and blend of the classical and modern, and remains one of Petit’s most performed productions. Clave had produced numerous set designs in the 1940s and 50s, and was eventually nominated for two Academy Award for his designs for Charles Vidor’s 1952 film ‘Hans Christian Anderson’.
Like other works from this series of designs, Clave offsets bold strokes of pure colour against the black of the sheet, creating a dramatic and energetic scene. The simplified, yet direct, drawing of the figures is highly characteristic of the artist and shows the influence of his friend and fellow Spaniard Pablo Picasso and the forms of Cubism on his work.
Clave has works in major public collections across the world, including Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia Museo, Madrid, British Museum, London and Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris. During his lifetime he exhibited with important galleries including Arthur Tooth & Sons, London in 1955 and the Picasso Museum, Antibes in 1958 and won a prize at the Venice Biennale in 1956. In 2022, the Palazzo Franchetti held the exhibition ‘The Spirit of the Warrior’ devoted to the artist’s work to coincide with the Venice Biennale.
Lot 20: Émile Bernard, Odalisques, c.1920
This sensual late masterpiece by Emile Bernard show’s the artist exploring Ingres’s Turkish Bath scenes in a Modern idiom. During the 1920s and following the First World War, like his contemporaries Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Bernard reasserted a Neo-Classical language into his work, exploring the history of 19th century painting. Like Matisse’s odalisques of the 1920s, the work also shows the influence of orientalism, but Bernard imbues his subjects with a sense of power as they confront the viewer with their gaze.
Emile Bernard was one of the most important French artists of the late 19th century, developing a modern Symbolist style alongside his friend Paul Gauguin in Britanny in the 1880s, based on an expressive use of colour and religious, pastoral imagery.
Lot 154: Afro Basadello, Untitled, 1964
The last highlight, would be Lot 154 - a classic example of Afro Basalbella’s mature style, demonstrating his assimilation of both European and North American Post-War abstraction in this work on paper. Afro Basalbella was part of a vital generation of artists that emerged from Italy in the 1950s, including Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, and his work combined the energy of Abstract Expressionism with the refined palette of historical Venetian painting. The artist visited and exhibited in New York during the 1950s alongside artists such as Jackson Pollock and Archille Gorky, and his close friend Willem de Kooning lived and worked for a time at his studio in Rome in 1959.
Afro is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Ca’Pesaro Museum in Venice, and his works are held in major public collections across the globe, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, MoMA, New York and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.
This work was originally owned by Winston Graham (1908-2003), the writer of the beloved Poldark novels.
The auction will take place on Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 October, 11.00 am
Viewing Times at Roseberys:
Thursday 6 October: 9.30am - 5pm
Friday 7 October: 9.30am - 5pm
Sunday 9 October: 10am - 2pm
Monday 10 October: 9.30am - 5pm
Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for condition reports and further information.
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