Affordable Acquisitions

Whatever the subject, it is always the high-value pieces from the hands of the “big names” that make the headlines. However, art created by established and reputable painters, potters, sculptors or factories does not always have to be expensive, and here I feature a selection all of which sold at auction for less than £1,000.

Little is known about one of the most prolific, successful and sought-after artists active from 1880 to 1920. Edward Aistrop was a renowned painter of dogs, his reputation was widespread, and he was frequently commissioned to paint both pets and champions. The majority of his works were portraits and head studies on a small scale.

The head study of a Manchester Terrier sold by Parker Fine Art Auctions for an above estimate £300 is typical of his output, with the head in profile against a plain background. It would have been painted in the early years of the 20th Century, for the dog does not have cropped ears, a fashion with this breed until ear cropping was banned in the U.K. at the instigation of Queen Victoria.

Parker Fine Art frequently includes lesser pieces or sketches by some of the big names in the genre. One example was a pastel of three Foxhounds heads by Arthur Wardle that sold for £800. Wardle produced a series of works that were reproduced on cigarette cards to help sell Players cigarettes and also on postcards, and the Foxhounds is typical of his output. The cards can be bought for very little, an inexpensive way of owning examples of work created by one of the great masters of the subject.

A second example at Parker’s was a chalk-and-pencil sketch by Thomas Blinks of an Irish Setter and Gordon Setter that sold for £160. Blinks was among the most sought-after sporting artists of the late 19th and early 20th century and has produced some very fine finished works of Setters that command high prices. He was one of the few artists to portray King George V in the hunting field.

Cecil Aldin completes the quartet of four of the great dog artists working at the end of the 19th Century and into the 20th Century. Aldin is best known for his dog subjects, although his hunting and coaching scenes are also very popular. His work was reproduced everywhere from ceramics to literature. There were upwards of 50 books either written and illustrated by him or for which he contributed the illustrations.

The signed chromolithograph was sold by Trevanion Auctioneers for £170. A patriotic piece, a subject not usually associated with Aldin, it shows a Bulldog, emblematic of Britain in times of war, studying a newspaper report of the Boer War, which started in 1899. The date would make it a comparatively early piece for Aldin.

Gorringes sold two animalier bronzes, a lunging Mastiff — “passez au large” — for an above estimate £900 and two Toy Spaniels seated on a cushion for a below estimate £360. Both were after models by Charles Valton, who produced more than 70 that were purchased by the State. Valton studied under Antoine-Louis Barye, the earliest and most famous of the French animalier school.

The Mastiff on a chain straining to attack was a popular subject with animaliers, but it was probably Prosper Lecourtier’s model that was the first. Most are cast with a stake of some sort, to which the chain is attached.

The two Toy Spaniels on a cushion, which serves as a plinth, makes an impressive centerpiece and was one of Valton’s most popular models. Valton probably got his inspiration from a rare earlier model by the master, Barye.

In 1710, as a result of the work of Friedrich Wilhelm Böttger — who had worked for Frederick I of Prussia, and under the patronage of Augustus II (the Strong — so called not for his prowess on the battlefield but rather in the boudoir, for he is reputed to have sired 354 children), Elector of Saxony, King of Poland — the first factory for the manufacture of porcelain was founded in Europe by royal decree. It is against this background that the Meissen factory was born.

In 1733, Heinrich Count von Brühl was appointed president of the treasury board that had control over the factory. The von Brühl family were enthusiastic Pug owners, the breed at this time being fashionable with the nobility. It was Heinrich and sculptor Johann Joachim Kändler, who had joined the factory in 1731, who jointly were responsible for the great tradition of Meissen Pugs. Reputedly the von Brühl family owned all the Pugs that Kändler modelled.

Well in excess of 50 different models featuring Pugs have been produced by the factory, and because of their enduring qualities many of the original models Kändler designed nearly 300 years ago are still in production today. This in itself is no small miracle when one considers the political changes that have taken place over the years in what we now call Germany, including many years of communist suppression in the East, which is where the factory is located. A few of the Meissen pieces will never be produced again because the Russian soldiers used the molds for target practice during World War II.

The group of a Pug and two Bolognese, a breed also owned by the von Brühl family, is one of Kändler’s 19th-Century models and was sold by Gorringes for £400. 

Kingham Auctioneers sold an interesting Sunderland lustre punchbowl by Moore and Co., the Sunderland based pottery, for £250 against a top estimate of just £80. The chief illustration on the bowl was a characterful dog, but it had local interest as well, with the Sunderland Bridge and the New Bridge over the River Wear at Sunderland also illustrated.