The 523-lot auction attracted plenty of private buyers to central Oxford and was around two-thirds sold, with £115,000 changing hands.
Top lot was an attractive mid-19th century oil by equine artist John Ferneley Junior (1815-62), consigned with a group of fresh-to-the-market pictures from a Cotswold residence. He was the eldest son of the great sporting artist John E Ferneley, whose canvases today can command six-figure sums.
The 2ft 1in x 2ft 10in (65 x 86cm) work depicts four horses and a dog in a wooded landscape dotted with deer. Signed and inscribed York, the city where Ferneley received many commissions from the officers of the cavalry stationed there, it bettered a £2000-3000 guide to sell for £4800.
Around a quarter of the sale was dedicated to prints and engravings, half of which had come from three private collections.
The smallest of these was a group of six lots of German Expressionist woodcuts consigned to the sale from the property of an Oxfordshire collector. These dynamic monochromatic works by a mix of artists, including Erich Heckel, Otto Beyer and Karl Schmidt Rottluff, attracted the London trade, in addition to private interest locally and abroad.
The top seller was Erich Heckel’s (1883-1970)Stralsund, an unframed 12 x 14in (31 x 36cm) woodcut on wove, dated to 1912, which sold for £2000 against a £1000-1500 estimate.
