Modern British painting: after decades in which twentieth-century British art was seriously undervalued, prices for paintings are finally beginning to reflect the quality of the works. Why has it taken so long?

Apollo, Sept, 2004 by Susannah Woolmer

In the past few years, demand has soared for Modern British paintings which in art-market terms, means works produced between about 1920 and 1980, the point at which they start to count as 'contemporary'. High-quality works of all kinds are selling well, from the conservative realism of the first part of the period through the unsettled, experimental interwar years to avant-garde postwar abstraction.

Record prices are being established on a regular basis: on 4 June, Christie's had its best-ever sale of twentieth century British art, in which new world-record prices were set for works by Graham Sutherland, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Caulfield, William Scott and Ivon Hitchens. Two days earlier, Sotheby's auctioned Stanley Spencer's Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta (Fig. 1) for 1,237,600 [pounds sterling], one of the highest prices paid for a work by the artist. The increasing popularity of this area of the market is making for an exciting time for dealers and collectors, but the fact that interest has become so strong only over the past two years is intriguing and worthy of exploration.

What has caused this shift in fortune? Many dealers feel that it is in part because British art has languished for so long in the shade of better known, international art movements. The British, laments Peter Nahum of the Leicester Galleries, have always been peculiarly apologetic about their homegrown talents, preferring instead to extol the virtues of their European and American counterparts. Five years ago, the fractured, sensual oils of Keith Vaughan and Graham Sutherland or the eccentric visions of Edward Burra were seriously undervalued compared with American or European artists of the same generation. It is only over the past ten years that Cork Street has begun to promote twentieth-century British art for its own sake, and only now are paintings of this period beginning to catch up with their foreign equivalents.

British art has always been consistently underpriced, says James Hyman, of James Hyman Fine Art, but now prices are gradually beginning to reflect the quality of the works. A gentle oil, Sennen Cove (c. 1917), by Laura Knight caused a stir at Sotheby's on 2 June when it sold for 95,200 [pounds sterling], and the exquisite The convent (1882) by Stanhope Forbes sold for a very respectable 341,600 [pounds sterling] in the same sale. Paintings by Walter Sickert (1860-1942), one of the key figures in early-twentieth-century British art, now sell for anything between 18,000 [pounds sterling] and half a million. At the other end of the period, Patrick Heron's charismatic abstracts sell for a range of prices from 5,000 [pounds sterling] to upwards of 100,000 [pounds sterling]. It is worth noting here that, in any price comparison, twentieth-century American art has consistently outstripped British art in the salerooms. For example in May 2001, a Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) sold for $6,166,000 at a sale of American paintings and drawings in New York. More recently, at the American paintings and drawings sale at Sotheby's New York on 19 May 2004, several John Singer Sargents (1856-1925) sold for comfortably over the 1m [pounds sterling] mark; the top lot fetching $8.8m. No British artist of the period has yet acquired the market clout of an O'Keefe or Sargent.

The much weaker performance of the Modern British art market is intrinsically linked to the diversity of the field. Modern British art cannot be readily segregated into groups of artists or defined by a single characteristic; there is no discernible linear art-historical development within the twentieth century in the UK. A preoccupation with modernism as the key artistic mode of the twentieth century has resulted in a rather lop-sided evaluation of British art in this period. Historians traditionally look for a tangible evolutionary development, but, as such a thing does not exist, much that could not be interpreted within the terms of a dominant avant-garde ideology was overlooked or rejected. British artists of the period were inherently individual, largely isolated from the fashions and movements that took hold of the continent and the us, thanks in no small part to two world wars. They pursued individual areas of personal interest unrestrained by any overt ideology.

James Rawlin, director of Modern British art at Sotheby's, London, asserts that today the market has two stylistic poles: traditional and modern. What is interesting is that these divergent areas are not particularly date-orientated: Ben Nicholson and Paul Nash were producing highly innovative material in the 1930s, whilst a preoccupation with realism and nature remained strong throughout the century.

Good quality examples of traditional art consistently sell well. There is perpetual demand for the very particular style of L.S. Lowry--The beach at Penarth (1960) sold for 151,200 [pounds sterling], outstripping its estimate of 60 [pounds sterling]-80,000, at Sotheby's on 2 June--but it is Modernism that is proving particularly exciting at present. Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore have always been in demand both in the UK and internationally, thanks to canny self-promotion, but now other artists, including Peter Lanyon, Lyon Hitchens, Alan Davie, David Bomberg and Patrick Heron are coming to wider public attention. James Hyman Fine Art is currently offering for sale a line example of Heron's radical canvasses of the 1960s. Reminiscent of aspects of American Abstract Expressionsim and in particular Mark Rothko, Blues with brown area (Fig. 2) possesses a tranquil and subtle mastery of form and colour.