An expression of the taste of Seeger’s partner Christopher Cone as much as Seeger himself, the collection notched up a premium-
inclusive total of £4.5m from 112 lots of which just five were left unsold. Most expensive work in the collection proved to be this abstract, right, a 1958 work by Patrick Heron (1920-1999). Entitled Lux Eterna, it was painted soon after (and clearly influenced by) Heron’s first exposure to the art of Mark Rothko.
Estimated at a tempting £25,000-35,000, it was bought by the Canadian collector David Thomson, son of the former Times Newspapers owner Lord Thomson of Fleet, at a record £260,000. Thomson, who is one of the world’s leading collectors of Heron, also bid a record £225,000 for the similarly-estimated 1906 oil The Afterglow – San Giorgio Maggiore and The Dogana, Venice by Albert Goodwin (1845-1932).
Heron soars to £260,000
UK: FOLLOWING on from the success of the International section of the Seeger Collection in New York last month, high quality and low estimates once again proved a winning combination for Sotheby’s (20/15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) when on June 14 they offered works by British artists collected by Stanley Seeger over the last 20 or so years.