The Scottish pictures market is an odd mix of schools, time periods and collectors. For a number of reasons, Sotheby’s moved their Scottish sale to London from the Gleneagles resort hotel where it had run for more than four decades. Colin Gleadell reports the results which show an interesting pause in demand for Jack Vettriano’s popular work:

Sotheby’s broke a 43 year tradition last week by moving its traditional summer Scottish art sale from the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland, to London. A far thinner crowd than was usual in the party-going atmosphere of Gleneagles was in attendance, but with the help of some telephone bidding, most of the top lots sold. The majority of these were paintings by the Scottish Colourists. Samuel John Peploe’s ‘Red and Pink Roses, Oranges and Fan’ from the 1920’s brought the top price of £421,250 from dealer, Richard Green, who had to outbid another London dealer, Alon Zakaim. Green said afterwards that other Peploe paintings of similar size and quality had made more, so was happy with his prize. The sale, which realised £3.4 million against a pre-sale estimate of £4 to £6 million, was down on the two previous Gleneagles sales which brought £5.4 million in 2007 and £4.9 million last year.

The market for Jack Vettriano, whose ‘Singing Butler’, sold for £744,500 in 2004, had softened markedly. Of the 14 Vettriano paintings offered only five sold. Nonetheless, Sotheby’s head of Scottish pictures, Andre Zlattinger, maintained that “our decision to hold our sales in London is a very positive move for the Scottish market,” adding that “we saw bidding at the sale from as far afield as North America, the Middle East and the Far East.”

Art Market News (Telegraph)