This month, our focus turns to fine paintings, from the working harbours of the Staithes Group to the wide skies of Yorkshire landscape painting and beyond.

There is something quietly absorbing about a good painting. It holds a moment, a place, a way of seeing that the artist alone was able to capture, and it carries that moment forward, often for centuries, into rooms and lives the artist never imagined. A picture painted on a Whitby quayside or beside a Yorkshire river can outlast everyone who knew the artist, and still arrive somewhere new with all of its original feeling intact, and there is real excitement to be found in the provenance that travels quietly alongside each one.

With that in mind, we are now inviting entries for our next Fine Painting sale, welcoming artworks ranging from the 17th century to the present day, including pieces from the Staithes Group, marine subjects and Yorkshire artists. Watercolours, oils, prints, sketches, British and European art and three-dimensional works are all welcome.

To give a sense of the kind of quality and subject matter we are looking for, we have shared some of our most recent results below.

The Staithes Group at Work

The Staithes Group, that fellowship of artists drawn to the working harbours and fishing communities of the North Yorkshire coast in the late 19th century, continues to command serious attention from collectors. Frederick William Jackson's Sorting Fish on Whitby New Quay, with Larpool Woods in the distance, signed and dated 1886, sold for £10,000, a related watercolour version having appeared at Sotheby's in 2001. Dame Laura Knight's charcoal study Circus Rider and Horses, carrying a Peter Haworth label, sold for £850. Mark Senior's A Flemish Fishmarket, with provenance running through the artist's daughter and three subsequent London auction houses, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1907, sold for £3,700, a reminder that the Group's most celebrated names worked across a remarkable range of subjects.

Edward Seago: Quiet Observation

Two watercolours by Edward Seago demonstrated the enduring pull of his understated, atmospheric style. Sea Anglers on a Beach sold for £2,900, and Farmer with Dog in Winter Landscape sold for £3,900. Seago's work continues to find buyers who respond to his particular gift for capturing English weather and English restraint in equal measure.

Yorkshire Landscapes, Far and Wide

Landscape painting provided some of the sale's most significant results. John Atkinson Grimshaw's Whitby from Scotch Head, signed and dated 1886, with provenance stretching back through Phillips, David Duggleby and a private collection, and supported by research from the late Alexander Robertson, former curator of Leeds Art Gallery and the leading authority on the artist, achieved a remarkable £55,000. Duncan Grant's The Farmstead at Charlston, with exhibition history at the Leicester Galleries from the collection of Sir Hugh Walpole, sold for £19,000. Anne Isabella Brooke's Penhill from Preston-under-Scar, Wensleydale, purchased directly from the artist by the vendor's parents in the 1970s, sold for £6,800.

George Weatherill's Coastal Trio

A charming set of three small watercolours by George Weatherill, depicting Whitby from the Sea, Caernarfon Castle and Whitby from the Upper Harbour and framed together, sold for £2,100, demonstrating the lasting appeal of grouped works by a single hand.

Nature and the Yorkshire Dales

Archibald Thorburn's watercolour Grey Wagtails, signed and dated 1923, sold for £3,000, a fine example of his celebrated ornithological work. William Mellor's On the Wharfe, Bolton Woods, Yorkshire sold for £4,000, capturing the riverside scenery that made his Yorkshire landscapes so popular in his lifetime and remains so today.

Staithes Group: Faces and Figures

A further group of Staithes Group works brought people, rather than place, to the foreground. Ralph Hedley's Girl Knitting, signed and dated 1873 and exhibited at the Laing Art Gallery in 1938, sold for £2,900. Arthur Friedenson's Artist's Followers, painted when the artist was just nineteen and previously sold at Christie's in 1991, sold for £6,000. Albert George Stevens' watercolour A Whitby Jet Worker, signed and dated 1909 and exhibited at the New English Art Galleries in Boroughbridge, sold for £3,800.

Consign for Our Next Fine Art Sale


These results reflect the strength and breadth of the market for British art, from Staithes Group harbour scenes to major Yorkshire landscapes and intimate figure studies. 
If you have paintings, watercolours, prints or sketches that might be suited to this kind of company, we would be delighted to hear from you.
Entries are invited for items valued at £150 and above, with the last day for entries falling on Friday, 31 July. For entries, please contact Dominic Cox on 01723 507111 or dominic.cox@dugglebys.com.

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