Painting History
The date of a painting can have a remarkable effect on its value. If the artist lived and depicted a seminal period of history, particular event, or political upheaval the work itself is not simply a work of art – it becomes, instead, a witness.
One of the most important examples of this to be sold at Bellmans was Sir John Lavery’s Study for ‘The Ratification of the Irish Treaty in the House of Lords, December 1921’.
On 16th December 1921 the Irish Treaty was ratified in the House of Lords, creating the Irish Free State. Lavery was commissioned to record this moment, having been given the same task in 1888 when asked to record the State visit of Queen Victoria to the International Exhibition in Glasgow; that visit took little more than half an hour, forcing Lavery to work at speed.
Under similar pressure 23 years later, sitting in the Strangers Gallery, he worked rapidly, with an exceptional concentration, deftly rendering events on a series of 23 x 35cm canvas-boards; sketches which he would draw on to create the finished work now hanging in the national gallery of Ireland.
Estimated at £20,000-30,000 this particular study made £35,000 hammer price and will be hung in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.
In today’s world, most of us carry a camera capable of filming unfolding events but prior to the advent of the smartphone, artists were commissioned to capture conflict zones. There are thousands of hours of footage of the two world wars, but a war artist’s job was to capture the essence of battle in a more permanent medium.
This led to some of the most powerful paintings of the 20th century with numerous artists suffering what would now be diagnosed as PTSD as a price for recording the horrors and inhumanity of war.
Some of the most arresting examples of this include John Singer Sargent’s ‘Gassed’ (1918-19, Imperial War Museum), Paul Nash’s ‘The Menin Road’ (1919, Imperial War Museum) and Christopher Nevinson’s ‘Paths of Glory’ (1917, Imperial war Museum).
In May 2023 Bellmans sold George LeRoux’s ‘Soldiers’ for £6500; a striking oil on canvas depicting a column of exhausted French soldiers in profile, one of whom is wearing a pair of German issue boots, presumably taken from a dead combatant. Such art does not necessarily need to depict combat to hold resonance and attract attention from buyers and bidders.
In June 2021 Bellmans sold a watercolour, titled ‘The Jolly Farmer’ by Barbara Jones. Jones was associated with the 'Recording Britain' project, a scheme initiated by Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery, and launched in 1940.
The project evokes the extraordinary sensibilities of the day - its aim was to record aspects of a Britain that would be lost forever if the Nazis had succeeded in invading. A 'War Economy Label' - paper from a recycled envelope with writing on the blank side - attached to the backboard of the work referred to the 'Londoners England Scheme' which was presumably a regional extension of the Recording Britain project and further increased the sense of context in which the picture was executed. Estimated at a conservative £200-300 the hammer finally fell to a private collector for the record price of £5500.
