The sale of Sir Richard Attenborough’s pictures was a clean sweep with 50 out of 50 lots sold and £4,596,150 in total with premium. That’s $7.699m in world currency. The L.S. Lowry picture Old Houses made $1.476m. Records were set for Graham Sutherland, Keith Vaughan and Christopher Richard Wynne.

The Telegraph covered the sale with these observations:

The sale also included a record for a print by Christopher Nevinson, French Troops Resting, which depicts a group of soldiers in 1916. It sold for £79,250 – almost twice the mid-range estimate of £40,000. It was among 12 black and white Nevinson prints from the First World War which together made £380,875.

James Mackie, from Sotheby’s print department, said before the sale that the rare prints “symbolise how we came to see war”[…] A Nevinson painting depicting an aerial fight in the Second World War, The Battlefields of Britain, sold for £217,250, against a pre-sale estimate of £100,000 to £150,000.

Lord and Lady Attenborough decided to sell the works, which represent some of the best of British 20th century art, as they had run out of space to hang them in their home in Richmond, Surrey. […] Their son Michael Attenborough, the theatre director, said earlier this week: “My father was way ahead of his time. He didn’t buy as investments – he wouldn’t want that sort of painting on his wall – he just loved the artists. Now when he is told their worth, his jaw just drops.”

Lord Attenborough’s Picture Sale Makes £4.6m at Sotheby’s (Telegraph)

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