News Blog

The weather was not promising on the day of our first auction of 2015.  Cold, dark, rain turning to sleet and back to rain again.  But that did not deter the many people who attended the auction bringing us good results on jewellery, clocks, and furniture but especially paintings. 

 First off was a watercolour by EA Rowe dated 1892 and entitled “Summer Bloom”.  We logged several commission bids, had six phone lines dedicated to the lot and the saleroom was crowded with bidders.  Bidding started at £100 and continued the hammer fell at £3,150 to a private buyer on the telephone. 

 Ernest Arthur Rowe (1860-1922) was a well-known painter of Victorian gardens.  He chronicled the gardens of the great estates of the UK.  His works were a particular favourite of Queen Mary and she is known to have owned 15 of his paintings.  Four Rowe paintings owned by Elizabeth II were shown at Sandringham in 1989 as part of the exhibition “Royal Gardens of England.”

Also garnering attention were two oil on board paintings by Adolphus Knell.  William Adolphus Knell (1801-1875) was a successful maritime painter and both the National Museums of Scotland and the Greenwich Maritime Museum hold examples of his work.  The items at auction sold for £720 and £640.

Finally, a signed oil on board portrait of a young woman by Susanna Renate Granitsch (1869-1946) exceeded its estimate by selling for £400.