The undated 21 x 17in (54 x 43cm) oil on canvas of a darkened factory interior (above), with a figure pushing a cart, sold to the trade at £4500 on June 7, three times the attractive top guide.
Pryde, who is principally remembered for his artistic partnership with his brother-in-law William Nicholson, produced a number of architectural fantasies, interiors and landscapes with a dark, romantic melancholic feel from the early 1900s onwards.
On the secondary market, his auction record stands at a premium-inclusive £91,250 paid at Christie’s dispersal of the Cowdray estate in 2011 for the foreboding First World War canvas, The Red Ruin, commissioned in 1916 by the artist’s patron, Annie Pearson, later 1st Viscountess Cowdray.
Elsewhere at Cuttlestones, Fruit Sucker–Java, (above) a 10½ x 8in (27 x 21cm) work in pastels of a bird by the French-born modernist artist Simon-Albert Bussy (1869-1954), sold to the London trade at £4800 against an £800-1200 guide.
Bearing labels for the Leicester Galleries, where it was exhibited in 1935, and Ernest Brown & Phillips, this privately consigned example has retained its bright colours and is a good example of the bold pictures of animals that are deemed his most successful works.
