SALE RESULTS

Auction Location: London, UK

Our sale of Fine Paintings and Works on Paper features 80 lots spanning four centuries. It includes works from two significant deceased estates: art dealer Alexander Iolas who promoted the bright and playful works by Jean Hugo and Niki de Sainte Phalle (lots 44-52), and gallerist Karsten Schubert, led by a green revolver on a vibrant red background by Michael Craig-Martin (lot 53), currently the subject of a retrospective at the Royal Academy, Piccadilly.

Colour dominates many of the post-War works. A stripe painting by the leading Washington Colour Field artist Gene Davis is a sale highlight. Davis worked alongside Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland also from D.C. in the 1950s and ‘60s perfecting his distinctive style. 65-6 by Davis (lot 58) dances and rhymes before the viewer’s eye. From the same collection and similarly optical are the works by Joe Tilson (lot 60) from 1965, and a rare painting by Justin Knowles (lot 59). Fellow colourist Howard Hodgkin is represented by Here we are in Croydon from 1979 (lot 63).

Modern British is led by an attractive group of watercolours by John Nash (lots 34-37), all acquired from the artist by the present owner’s grandfather. Other British figurative painters featured in the sale include Alan Lowdnes with a street scene in Altrincham near Manchester (lot 40), and three sketches by the young Michael Andrews (lots 41-43). Elsewhere there are works by John Piper and humorous illustrations by graphic artists Ronald Searle and Quentin Blake (lots 71 & 72).

Artists from further afield include two 18^th/ 19^th century Cuzco paintings from Peru and good Australian examples: a watercolour by John Russell of the Pont de Neuilly, and an atmospheric painting of a dust storm in the New South Wales out back by John Charles Goodhart of 1907 capturing a storm that year (lots 31 & 38).  ‘en plein-air’-ists in the sale include Otto Modersohn, co-founder of Worpswede school in Bavaria in the 1890s (lot 19) and three delightful paintings of children by Scottish painter Gemmel Hutchison, influenced by Barbizon in France and the Hague School in Holland (lots 27, 28 & 30). 

For more information please contact us | pictures@olympiaauctions.com | +44  (0)20 7806 5541

Auction Location: London, UK

Including:

THE BILL TERRY COLLECTION, PART II: NON WESTERN ARCHERY

THE ROY ELVIS COLLECTION OF INDIAN ARMS & ARMOUR, PART V

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF CHARLES SOMERS COCKS, 3RD EARL SOMERS (1819-83), EASTNOR CASTLE, THENCE BY DESCENT

AN IMPORTANT ENGLISH PRIVATE COLLECTION

THE ROBERT E. BROOKER JR. COLLECTION OF RARE ANTIQUE ARMS AND ARMOUR, PART ONE: THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

Contact Simeon Beever for enquiries

simeon.beever@olympiaauctions.com | + 44 (0) 20 7602 4805

Viewing days: 

Sunday 1st December: 12:00pm to 4:00pm
Monday 2nd December: 10:00am to 7.00pm
Tuesday 3rd December: 10.00am to 5.00pm

Recent testimonials about Olympia Auctions 

'friendly, efficient and helpful advice with personal service, much appreciated'

'very good auction house. Competent staff, high quality artifacts.'

The auction ‘European Works of Art, Objects and Silver’ is one of our biannual live sales offering a range of ceramics, sculpture and works of art, silver from around the world, and objects of vertu.

Highlights in this sale include finely painted KPM plaques, Russian Easter eggs, a marble figure of a young woman by Cesare Lapini, Persian and Iraqi silver, Art Deco Puiforcat silver, Victorian naturalistic silver and fifty lots of silver boxes and smallwork from a private London collection.

Contact us with any queries on: decorativearts@olympiaauctions.com, + 44 (0)20 7806 5545

Viewing Times:

18 Nov 2024 10:00 - 20:00 

19 Nov 2024 10:00 - 17:00 

20 Nov 2024 10:00 - 17:00 

The auction ‘Jewellery & Watches’ is one of our biannual live sales offering a range of ladies’ and gentlemen’s watches and antique and modern gemstone and gold jewellery.

Highlights in this sale include a gentleman’s Vacheron Constantin wristwatch, Patek Philippe and Piaget gold Ladies’ wristwatches, Fabergé and Russian Easter Egg pendants, a gold and diamond ‘snake’ armlet, a large ‘en tremblant’ diamond flower spray and a variety of butterfly and insect brooches, a Cartier diamond line bracelet, rare Grima jewellery and collectible Mrs Charlotte Newman pieces.

Contact us with any queries on: decorativearts@olympiaauctions.com, + 44 (0)20 7806 5545

Viewing Times:

18 Nov 2024 10:00 - 20:00 

19 Nov 2024 10:00 - 17:00 

20 Nov 2024 10:00 - 17:00 

This online only auction includes Indian, Islamic, Himalayan and South-East Asian Works of Art spanning several centuries.  Peruse Indian terracottas, bronzes, silver, textiles, miniatures and photographs. Other items include Persian pottery, Ottoman tiles and textiles. From the Himalayas, have a look for Tibetan Thang-kas and metalwork.

PLEASE NOTE:

The office is closed over the weekend, but the enquires@olympiaauctions.com email is being monitored. Please contact us here if you have any queries.

The lots close 30 seconds apart from each other, but if there is another bid in the final 10 minutes of a particular lot closing, the time of this lot will be extended.

Viewing Times: 

Sunday 11th November 12.00pm to 4.00pm

Monday 11th November: 10.00am to 8.00pm

Tuesday 12th November: 10.00am to 5.00pm

AUCTION OPENS: Friday 8th November 9.00am

AUCTION CLOSES: Sunday 17th November 4.00pm

Contact us at enquiries@olympiaauctions.com 

The auction includes a selection of Islamic tiles and early pottery and a wide range of bronze images and early Indian stone sculptures, paintings and textiles from India and South-East Asia. Highlights include an interesting group of early Thai bronze images of Buddha, an important Kashan ’silhouette ware’ turquoise pottery ewer, and a spectacular pair of silver bottles in the so called ‘coriander pattern’ from Lucknow. There is also an important group of Islamic manuscripts.

Contact Arthur Millner or Nicholas Shaw for enquiries

arthur.millner@olympiaauctions.com | + 44 (0) 20 7806 5541

nicholas.shaw@olympiaauctions.com | + 44 (0) 20 7806 5541

Viewing days: 

10th November 2024 12:00 - 4:00pm 

11th November 2024 10:00am - 8:00pm

12th November 2024 10:00am - 5:00pm

Recent testimonials about Olympia Auctions 

'friendly, efficient and helpful advice with personal service, much appreciated'

'very good auction house. Competent staff, high quality artifacts.'

The biannual Chinese and Japanese sales offer a wide range of fine works representing the richness and breadth of East Asian ceramics, sculptures, bronze and works of art.

We are pleased to present ceramics and works of art from private collections across the UK during Asian Art in London week in our forthcoming sale on 6th November at 2pm.  Highlights include a small collection of Chinese works of art for the scholar's table, collected by a naval captain stationed in Hong Kong harbour in the 1860s.  Also a striking Japanese six-fold screen ‘Egrets in Snow’ from the collection of a Lady; a private collection of Chinese snuff bottles; a Chinese white jade ‘peach and bat’ group from the Qing Dynasty, acquired in the 1960/70’s; and a rare Chinese stone panel from the Property of Peter O’Toole.

The sale also includes an interesting selection of 12th-19th century Chinese ceramics, Tang Dynasty bronzes as well as a small collection of Chinese modern art.  There are also 19th century Chinese scrolls, hats and shoes.  In the Japanese section there are bronzes, porcelain, stoneware and works on paper. 

Contact Head of Sale Stephen Loakes for enquiries | stephen.loakes@olympiaauctions.com + 44 (0)20 7806 5541

Viewing Times:

3rd Nov 2024 12:00 - 16:00 

4th Nov 2024 10:00 - 20:00 

5th Nov 2024 10:00 - 17:00 

The Modern & Contemporary African and Middle Eastern Art market has flourished over the last 15 years and continues to grow, establishing a strong foothold in the UK.  Our expert department at Olympia Auctions has, uniquely among other auction houses, brought together the synergies of the Arab world, Maghreb and the rest of Africa, reflecting the mutuality and shared history of these regions. 

Our previous sales have included works from the collection of the late Saudi collector, Dr Mohammed Said Farsi, and we are proud to hold the auction record for the highest value work on paper by the renowned Egyptian artist Tahia Halim (sold for £6,250).   

Each spring and autumn, we hold bi-annual, tightly curated, live auctions, offering both young and established collectors the opportunity to acquire works in a wide range of price brackets. 

Contact expert Janet Rady to consign in a future sale or for any queries:  janet.rady@olympiaauctions.com | + 44 (0)20 7806 5541

Viewing Times:

27th Oct 2024 12:00 - 16:00 

28th Oct 2024 10:00 - 20:00 

29th Oct 2024 10:00 - 17:00 

The online auction from 10th - 20th October, includes paintings by Leonard Rosoman and set designer Jocelyn Herbert, theatre posters, photographs by Lord Snowdon and Cecil Beaton and drama awards.  Accumulated over a lifetime, there are also programmes and books relating to all his major works including Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, The World of Paul Slickey, Luther, A Patriot for Me, Inadmissible Evidence, Hotel in Amsterdam, and Dejavu. Other personal possessions such as hats, scarves, walking sticks and teddies are amongst the lots, giving an enthralling insight into the life and character of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated playwrights.

Auction Introduction by Peter Whitebrook - author of 'John Osborne, Anger is not about...'

‘It’s amazing up here’ announced John Osborne, in the deep winter of 1987, gazing from the windows of The Hurst, his new home, a grey stone house of twenty rooms built in 1812, near the village of Craven Arms in Shropshire. ‘I can’t believe my good fortune.’

He was 58 and he and Helen, his fifth and last wife, had sold their house in Kent, complaining the south-east was more congested every day. At The Hurst, they were embraced by a meditative twenty-six acres of lawns, bluebell woods, an orchard, a kitchen garden and a pond, and beyond, the ‘blue, remembered’ hills of Housman’s imagination and the Welsh Marches. ‘A chunk of ancient England,’ Osborne noted proudly, a freshly recharged glass of champagne fizzing in his hand, ‘and the Welsh at good arm’s length. This is the final resting place.’

Indeed, he would remain at The Hurst until his death, a few days shy of his sixty-fifth birthday, at the end of 1994. Newspaper tributes applauded an astonishing career that had begun at the age of 25 with Look Back in Anger, his third play, inspired largely by his first marriage to the actress Pamela Lane. The date of its first performance—8 May 1956—at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, is synonymous with a tectonic shift in British cultural history, heralding a new, vigorous and invigorating kind of drama, raw but superbly crafted, giving lava flow voice to the postwar ‘angry young man’, a tag that pursued Osborne his entire life, the ‘young’ eventually being replaced by ‘old.’

Over the following decade, he wrote The Entertainer, Luther, Inadmissible Evidence, A Patriot for Me and The Hotel in Amsterdam, extraordinary plays of compassion and fomenting discontent all premiered at the Royal Court and starring great actors: Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney, Nicol Williamson and Paul Scofield. He brought to the theatre a combative intensity of feeling and a flamboyant sense of language in which, he said, ‘it is possible only to tell the truth.’ The power is volcanic, the voice unmistakably his. Subsequently, many of those who knew him through his plays were surprised when they met him by his mellifluous courtesy.

The playwright doubled as a director of Woodfall Productions that made a string of outstanding films in the 1960s, including Tom Jones, the screenplay of which won Osborne an Oscar. He became a millionaire on the profits. He lived lavishly—too lavishly. Although Osborne’s reputation rests on that remarkable ten-year run at the Court, the best of his later plays also demand attention, yet too often, in the words of David Hare, a fervent admirer, ‘passion passed into prejudice.’

A natural romantic, an uneasy patriot, a dissenter who disliked change, Osborne became disenchanted with England, although England, and Englishness, remained one of his over-riding themes. By now, his health was battered by alcohol, tobacco and diabetes. In his workroom at The Hurst, surrounded by framed posters of his plays, his books and scrap albums, fortified by the opera blasting from his loudspeakers, champagne and Sobranie Special Reserve pipe tobacco, he flung himself into writing the second volume of his memoirs and occasional journalism.

He celebrated a rural, lost-Eden England, denounced the ‘European diktats’ of Brussels and the ‘glib populists’ among the Church of England who, to make the liturgy ‘more accessible’, produced the Alternative Service Book, which ‘blasphemes against language itself in its banality and fawning to please.’ Out he would go on bracing walks, clad in his greatcoat with its complicated layers and flaps, swinging his stick, the dogs lolloping alongside him, headphones clamped over his cap and ears. ‘The Dragoon Guards get me up the lower slopes. Handel may lift me to the peak.’

Ill and besieged by spiralling debt, he swept the bills from clamouring creditors to one side and ‘struggled’ to finish Déjàvu, a sequel of sorts to Look Back in Anger. It turned out to be his last play, and a financial catastrophe. Reassurance, though, was found by looking out of the window. ‘I might be the poorest playwright in England,’ he reflected, ‘but I have the best views.’

Full details of the abbreviated references in the text are: 

John Heilpern, John Osborne, A Patriot for Us, London, 2007

Peter Whitebrook, Author of John Osborne, Anger is not about... London, 2015

Viewing Times:

13th Oct 2024 12:00 - 16:00 

14th Oct 2024 10:00 - 20:00 

15th &16th Oct 2024 10:00 - 17:00

17th & 18th Oct 2024 10:00 - 17.00 (By Appointment)

Contact Adrian Biddell for further information about this auction | adrian.biddell@olympiaauctions.com | + 44 (0) 20 7806 5541

The first 20th Century Design auction held at Olympia Auctions, headed by the specialist Josef Huber.  The sales will include a curated selection of design and applied arts.  Items include furniture, lamps, design objects, studio ceramics, mirrors, wall decoration, hi-fi and audio equipment.  

Josef worked as a specialist and head of 20th Century Design sales at Bonhams followed by Sotheby's before forming his own his own historical design consultancy.  Josef has been involved in university-level education, spending the past 10 years until last year as director of post-graduate interior design at Chelsea College of Arts.

Contact Josef for advice, valuations and to consign to his next sale:   josef.huber@olympiaauctions.com | +44 (0) 207806 5541 

Viewing Times:

13th Oct 2024 12:00 - 16:00 

14th Oct 2024 10:00 - 20:00 

15th Oct 2024 10:00 - 17:00

16th Oct 2024 10:00 - 17:00

17th Oct 2024 10:00 - 17.00 (By Appointment)

18th Oct 2024 10:00 - 17.00 (By Appointment)

A biannual auction of paintings, works on paper and sculpture from a wide range of categories and works spanning hundreds of years. An auction to appeal to all tastes comprising a vast array of subject matter with very attractive 'middle-market' estimates.

Viewing Times By Appointment:

4th Oct 2024 10:00 - 17:00 (By Appointment)

6th Oct 2024 12:00 - 16:00 (By Appointment)

A unique auction comprising the collection of 18th and early 19th century British watercolours, once belonging to connoisseur and author Iolo Aneurin Williams (1890-1962). Williams wrote the definitive collectors's guide 'Early English Watercolours' in 1952. Having been kept safely - in storage boxes under a bed - this will be their first appearance on the market for more than 60 years and in some cases much longer. 

Iolo Williams was a museums and art critic for The Times from 1936 onwards and an avid collector.  Born in Middlesborough, he lived in Hindhead in his youth and latterly in Kew, south-west of London, and formed his collection from the 1930’s to the 1950’s when unidentified drawings could be picked up for a modest price from dealers and auctions. Through diligent research, he identified many works as being by leading exponents of the golden age of British drawings and watercolours: artists such as Thomas Girtin, Richard Wilson, William Payne, John Varley and Paul Sandby. He also discovered and put on record other artists about whom little was then known.

In 1952 he published his monumental and highly influential work Early English Water-Colours, and Some Cognate Drawings by Artists Born Not Later Than 1785' which listed and discussed works by 600 British draughtsmen. Arts writer Huon MallaIieu, in his own essential book for collectors Understanding Watercolours of 1985, describes it as “both a labour of love and scholarship undertaken by one of the most civilised and knowledgeable collectors of his day, it gradually became not only essential reading, but a collector’s item in its own right for cognoscenti” and “a joy to read”.

The auction is a rare opportunity for collectors, both seasoned and new, to enjoy the sort of experience Williams would have had of looking through folders of mixed, unframed drawings and watercolours in which hidden gems could be discovered. 

Contact Suzanne Zack for further information about this auction | suzanne.zack@olympiaauctions.com | + 44 (0) 20 7806 5541

Viewing Times:

29th Sep 2024 12:00 - 16:00 

30th Sep 2024 10:00 - 20:00 

01st Oct 2024 10:00 - 17:00 

This one-of-a-kind auction focuses on the redisovery of 20th century artists, many of whom exhibited in leading West End galleries in their day, their works featuring in museums and art galleries around the world.  All now deceased, with many having suffered undeserved obscurity since, their inclusion in From the Studio: Works from Artists' Estates puts the spotlight firmly back on them, to reveal a range of extraordinarily talented men and women. 

Most of the artists were admired, promoted and written about by eminent 20th century art critics. Several were Jewish emigres, forced from their homelands to find their way anew in Britain and elsewhere.  Many were close friends with other leading contemporary artists, sharing studios and ideas; some taught, several at the Royal College of Art. Throughout, their efforts both individually and together chart the myriad movements and counter movements that define the dynamic 20th century modernist landscape, ranging from Impressionism to Abstraction. 

Viewing Times:

29th Sep 2024 12:00 - 16:00 

30th Sep 2024 10:00 - 20:00 

01st Oct 2024 10:00 - 17:00 

enquiries@olympiaauctions.com

Tel: +44 (0)20 7806 5541

Starts: 30th August, 2024 9am
Ends from: 8th September, 2024 4pm

Including:

Antique Arms & Armour

Asian Works of Art

Fine Art Books, Including Books from Three Specialist Libraries of Indian and South-East Asian Art Reference Books

Works by Nadira Azzouz (Iraqi 1927-2020)

Auction to start at 12 noon

Sale starting at the conclusion of the Studio Sale. 

Many lots to be sold without reserve.