Scottish Art Sales
Published May 20th, 2006
Experts concede that Scotland’s art buyers are a traditional crowd, but say that “the Vettriano effect” is starting to open doors for works by other living artists. Jack Vettriano’s The Singing Butler holds the record price for a Scottish painting at £744,800.
Contemporary art is bringing in huge profits in sales in London and New York – and now Sotheby’s and Lyon & Turnbull are planning their first Scottish auctions devoted entirely to the genre. This month in New York, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales of contemporary art broke records with total sales of well over $100 million (£53 million).
Contemporary art is typically defined as work by living artists – but the boundaries are often stretched to include the post-war era. Sotheby’s sold Roy Lichtenstein’s Sinking Sun for $15.7 million (£8.4 million) and Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XVI for the same price, while Christie’s sold Andy Warhol’s Small Torn Campbell’s Soup Can for $11.7 million (£6.2 million).
Lyon & Turnbull, the expanding Edinburgh auctioneers who recently opened a London office, have hired a specialist in new contemporary art, Ben Hanly. He begins work next month ahead of the firm’s first contemporary art sale in September.
