This year marks Christie’s 250th anniversary and the house announced today that one of its key celebrations, the Defining British Art sale scheduled for 30 June, will be anchored by a trio of historic works by heavyweight UK artists: Francis Bacon, Sir Stanley Spencer and LS Lowry.
Each almost seems to have been selected to represent different periods of British art history, each is strong for different reasons. The oldest, The Garage (1929), is Spencer's vision of an idealised workshop, with men and women toiling together, for a series on Industry and Peace commissioned by the Empire Marketing Board. Populist and engaging, its estimate is between £1.5m and £2.5m. Consigned by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, the work is being sold to raise fund for arts education and access.
Next, there is Laurence Stephen Lowry's Industrial scene (1951), a complex view of the north of England in spirit, if not necessarily a literal depiction of a real place. “Lowry was fascinated with exploring the changing face of industry on both the landscape and the human figure,” the auction house says in a statement, adding that the artist’s use of an elevated view gives “the hurrying figures… a particularly diminutive feel, as they become almost engulfed within the urban sprawl that fades into the background.” The painting is also estimated to sell for between £1.5m and £2.5m, a reasonable range as a similar scene from the Lorde Foot Collection of Works by LS Lowry sold at Christie's London for £2.6m in 2011.
Finally, there is Francis Bacon’s portrait of Henrietta Moraes, No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe (1968), estimated to make around £20m. The painting was previously part of the private collection of Belgian furniture manufacturer Roger Vanthournout, and made a record for the artist when it was sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2006 for $15m, including buyer’s premium, against an estimate of $9m-$12m. An earlier portrait of Moraes by Bacon sold for £21.3m at Christie’s London in February 2012, and similar drug-tinged works are in the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid and the Fondation Beyeler in Basel.
Meanwhile, the auction house is also planning a month-long loan exhibition (17 June-15 July) that will be open to the public for free, and will include some of the most important British works of art that have been handled by Christie’s in the last 250 years. “Ever since James Christie first opened his doors for business in 1766, in St James’s London, where the headquarters remain today, Christie’s has championed British art and artists,” the auction house says in a statement, “with both Reynolds and Gainsborough among the regular visitors to Christie’s salerooms.” Details of the exhibition are still being finalised.
