A roundup of the art worth seeing at BADA
The BADA Antiques & Fine Art Fair on Chelsea’s Duke of York Square is an annual showcase of art and antiques that range in price from £100 to £1 million. Here, The Steeple Times picks three of our favourite items on display that suit a wide range of budgets.
A 1961 pencil drawing of a group of down and outs by Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887 – 1976) is poignant in the wake of our coverage of Gina and Alan Miller’s Hope Springs charity concert last Tuesday that included a choir made up entirely of homeless people. With an almost non-existent background, the focus is on the faces of this disjointed collection of individuals. Priced at £79,950 and available through The Trinity House gallery, the critic Edward Mullins sums up Lowry’s character very aptly in the quote: “He doesn’t belong to anybody. He belongs to a different kind of tradition that of the English isolated eccentric. They are all isolated freaks”. A sad indication of how society functions today but nonetheless, a fine work.
A highlight for anyone interested in nature is most certainly an oil on canvas by Sir Peter Markham Scott (1909 – 1989). Captioned “Ducks returning the decoy at daybreak” and painted by the son of the explorer Sir Robert Falcon Scott (1868 – 1912), this painting is priced at £16,000 available through Rountree Tryon Galleries. Sir Peter Scott was “one of the most versatile Englishmen of his generation, being an accomplished artist, naturalist, international sportsman, conservationist and man of action”. Amongst his achievements were to rescue the Hawaiian Goose from extinction. If only there were more like him today.
On the Sim Fine Art stand, a most unusual showcase of the art of Second World War firemen has been put together by Sim Fine Art. Affordable – with prices ranging from £250 to £12,500 – these simple works show the ordinary moments in war from the perspectives of those who tried to stop London burning. They are timely reminders of how as quickly a city can be built, it can easily be destroyed.
BADA Antiques & Fine Art Fair, Duke of York Square, London, SW3. Open to the public until 25th March. Tickets are £10 per person or £15 for one that admits two people.
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