MODERN BRITISH & 20TH CENTURY ART

MODERN BRITISH& 20TH CENTURY ART

9th December 2020

DEPARTMENT VICTOR FAUVELLE +44 (0) 1722 446961 vf@woolleyandwallis.co.uk

ED BEER +44 (0) 1722 446962 eb@woolleyandwallis.co.uk

HANNAH FARTHING +44 (0) 1722 446970 hf@woolleyandwallis.co.uk

Now accepting consignments for the 3rd March 2021 auction of Old Masters, British & European Paintings.

Closing date for entries 15th January 2021.

OPPOSITE. Sir Kyffin Williams RA (Welsh 1918-2006) Standing stones at Penrhos Feilw Signed with initials KW. (lower left) Oil on canvas 60.9 x 91.5cm Estimate £15,000 – 20,000

1. Lynn Chadwick CBE, RA (1914-2003) Pair of Cloaked Figures III Each signed dated and numbered C/77/765/5/8 (‘C’ in a triangle, on the underside of each cloak) Bronze Male figure 17.1 x 19cm; Female figure 17.5 x 15.5cm (2) Estimate £30,000 – 40,000

2. Roderic O’Conor (Irish 1860-1940) Seated Nude Stamped with studio stamp atelier/O CONOR (on the reverse) Oil on canvas 92 x 73.5cm Estimate £30,000 – 50,000

3. Charles Sargeant Jagger MC, ARA (1885-1934) No Man’s Land Signed C.Sargeant Jagger Sc (lower right) Bronze relief with brown patina on an oak mount, conceived 1918-1919, probably from an edition of seven cast in 1935 16.6 x 49.1cm (excluding mount) Estimate £15,000 – 20,000

December’s auction of Modern British & 20th Century Art will feature the collection of Sir Alan and Lady Cox, which comprises over 80 Welsh pictures, a highlight of which will be a painting by Sir Kyffin Williams. Sir Kyffin is widely regarded as one of Wales’s greatest artists, best known for his depictions of the rugged Welsh landscape. Standing stones at Penrhos Feilw (opposite) is a fine example of his work, demonstrating his characteristic use of a palette knife to apply blocks of colour with thick impasto. He expertly conveys the ancient monumentality of the land under a brooding grey sky.

From 1976 Lynn Chadwick, one of the leading post-war British sculptors, ‘evolved striding figures clad in cloaks which, as the idea took hold of his imagination, became ever more voluminous and billow [sic] out in the wind behind them’. This is exemplified by Pair of Cloaked Figures III, from 1977 (fig. 1). Whilst the pair have the intrinsic stateliness so characteristic of Chadwick’s figurative work, the cloaks add a sense of movement and dynamism as they stride forward.

The Irish painter, Roderic O’Conor, spent most of his career in France, and his fascination with the female nude began in 1904, when he moved from Brittany to Paris. Here he was able to hire professional models and paint them in his spacious studio in Montparnasse. Seated Nude (fig. 2) reflects the range of influences that O’Conor absorbed during his career, particularly from the Post-Impressionists, and demonstrates why he has been described as ‘the most avant garde English-speaking artist of his generation’.

Charles Sargeant Jagger was a sculptor who, following active service in the First World War, focused on military subjects in his work. He first began work on No Man’s Land (fig. 3) in 1918, when recovering from a serious wound. The final, full sized version is in the Tate’s collections, and was described by John Singer Sargent as ‘The best thing I have seen so far by any artist of the War’. The work, based on Jagger’s own experiences, shows a listening post in No Man’s Land, where a soldier hides amongst the bodies of his dead comrades in order to listen to the enemy near by.