Newton 2

A picture from a Bonham's sale catalog, the one featuring content free art, mentioned yesterday. This picture, not in the same league, to my mind, as the one in Ottawa (see above and also reference 1), was going for in the region of £25,000.

I learned that the artist came from an arty family, in fact the Newtons of Winsor & Newton, still alive and well at reference 2.

Interesting to see that, if one had the money, one can still buy the work of serious people of whom one has heard. So the catalogue included offerings from Hepworth, Moore, Frink, Lowry, Sickert, Pisarro, Sutherland and Nicholson, amongst others.

There was also a handsome coloured drawing of trees in winter by Paul Nash. Sadly, I could not afford it, as it would have gone well with a reproduction of a painting of a corn field at harvest time by his brother John, which I inherited from an aunt and the original of which can sometimes be seen at Tate Britain.

Oddly, while the Tate does have a large collection of work by both the Nash brothers, and a lot of it illustrated online, this particular one is not, for some unexplained copyright reason, despite being alive and well in the google collection. But I have learned that John was also a considerable wood engraver, which might be how the reproduction came to be with my aunt.

I also learned, while extracting this page from the catalogue, that Bonham's make very sturdy catalogues. This one resisted deconstruction by hand and I was forced to resort to a serious kitchen knife, and even then it did not submit to a clean cut down the spine and I had to fiddle about a bit.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/two-arts-and-building.html.

Reference 2: http://www.winsornewton.com/uk/.