NEW YORK—Sotheby’s sale of Scottish and sporting paintings at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland, on Aug. 29, realized a total of £5.24 million ($10.5 million), the second-highest total to date. Of 248 lots offered, 156, or 65 percent, were sold.
Dominating the high end of the sale were works by Jack Vettriano and the Scottish colourists, a group of four Scottish artists who frequently traveled to France in the early 20th-century and were heavily influenced by the French Post-Impressionists.
The top price of the sale was £486,000 ($936,468), given for Vettriano’s Bluebird at Bonneville (estimate: £400,000/600,000), from his “Bluebird” series, commissioned by Sir Terence Conran for London’s Bluebird Club in 1997. The price marked the second-highest for the artist at auction.
In all, eight works by Vettriano found buyers, taking a total of just over £1 million ($2 million). These included Dance Me to the End of Love, which won £192,000 ($384,000), against an estimate of £100,000/150,000.
The second-highest price of the sale was the £276,000 ($552,276) paid for Samuel John Peploe’s Tulips (estimate: £200,000/300,000). Another colourist work, Still Life with a Lacquer Screen, circa early 1930s, by Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, brought £216,000, or $432,216 (estimate: £150,000/200,000), from a London dealer. Two other oils by Cadell also appeared among the top lots—Interior: The Open Window, 1933, and Still Life with a Tulip and a Black Fan. Each carried an estimate of £80,000/120,000 and fetched £96,000 ($192,000).