Description
CHRISTIE'S SOUTH KENSINGTON SALE 4055,NOVEMBER 15,2006,251 PAGES,300 LOTS,NEW CONDITION! On November 15 Christie's London offered The Poetry of Crisis: The Peter Nahum Collection of British Surrealist and Avant-Garde Art, one of the outstanding single-owner collections of modern British art in private hands. Comprising approximately 300 paintings, watercolors and drawings by a range of artists including John Armstrong, Robert Colquhoun, Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Paul Nash, William Scott and Graham Sutherland, this private collection had been assembled over a period of 20 years and represented the collecting passion and discerning eye of Peter Nahum, a leading expert on 19th- and 20th-century British art and regular contributor to the BBC's The Antiques Roadshow.
The pictures, all made between 1933 and 1951, offered a unique insight into how the influences of those troubled times affected British artists. The Collection had never before been publicly exhibited in its entirety and was expected to realize in excess of 3 million, with individual estimates ranging from 1,000 to 100,000.
Peter Nahum joined Sotheby's in 1966 and became head of the British Painting Department. In 1984 he opened The Leicester Galleries in St James's, London, specializing in paintings, drawings and sculptures of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is currently adviser to major private collections and museums throughout the world, signatory on authentication certificates for Victorian paintings sold to Japan and official valuer for the Department of Arts, Heritage and Environment of the Government of Australia. He also acts as a celebrity auctioneer for many charities. He is a member of the B.A.D.A. (The British Antique Dealers' Association), of S.L.A.D. (The Society of London Art Dealers), television personality, academic, lecturer, author, frame designer and regular lender of paintings to international exhibitions.
