Modern British & 20th Century Art

THE VIEWING OF THIS SALE WILL TAKE PLACE AT OUR NEW CASTLE GATE EXHIBITION SPACE Unit 1B, Castle Gate Business Park Old Sarum, Salisbury SP4 6QX

Click here for a virtual tour of the sale.

Our May sale is led by The Siegfried Sassoon Collection (lots 1-77), the highlight of which is a wonderful still life by his friend Sir William Nicholson (lot 77). The painting is a stunning demonstration of Nicholson’s ability to capture the nuances of tone and surface in response to light and shadow. The collection also includes over 40 of Sassoon’s own caricatures and drawings, which depict some of the most notable figures in the literary and social circles of the period, including the Sitwells, Rudyard Kipling, T. E Lawrence, William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot and John Masefield. There are also numerous first editions of his work, various items of correspondence, family photographs and notably Sassoon’s original handwritten manuscript of his poem The Child at the Window. These works have remained in Sassoon’s family since his death, available to only the occasional scholar, and will be offered for sale for the first time.

The sale also includes a second painting by Nicholson, entitled Turtle Soup (lot 140), which is a depiction of a livery dinner at Goldsmith’s Hall. Other highlights from the early 20th Century include a nude by Roderic O’Conor (lot 170); drawings and watercolours by Paul Nash (lot 143), Percy Wyndham Lewis (lot 130) and Henry Lamb (lot 131); and prints by Walter Sickert (lots 95-97) and Eric Ravilious (lot 145). Later works include examples by Howard Hodgkin (lots 241-243), Paul Feiler (lot 254), Mary Fedden (lot 228), Barbara Rae (lot 390), and Gary Bunt (415-417).

Away from Britain, the sale includes a large, panoramic landscape by Haji Widayat (lot 296), three bronze sculptures by Dylan Lewis (lots 360-362), and prints by Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Edward Ruscha (lot 263).