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THE MOST VALUABLE COLLECTION OF 20TH CENTURY ART EVER TO GO UNDER THE HAMMER IN THE NORTH EAST
The most valuable collection of 20th century art ever to go under the hammer in the North East of England realised more than half a dozen six-figure sums in our three-day sale
Formed by the late Lionel Jacobson (1905-1978), one-time head of the giant Jackson the Tailor-Montague Burton tailoring group the top price of the collection fell to one of five works by well-known British artist David Bomberg (1890-1957). A self portrait painted in the 1930s it sold for £147,000 to the London trade.
Also fetching six-figure sums and bought by the London trade were another Bomberg, this time one of his Spanish landscapes, and a work by L S Lowry. The Bomberg landscape, Zahara, Andalusia, fetched £145,000; the Lowry painting of an old sailing ship hulk off the North East coast, £111,000.
This was the best picture sale in our company’s long history . The Jacobson collection made a substantial contribution to the sale, realising more than £500,000.
The three-day sale concluded with a total realised of £1.25 million and was also the highest figure achieved for a fine art and antiques sale in our 168 year history.
During the 1950s and 1960s North East tailoring entrepreneur Lionel Jacobson became the area’s leading collector of contemporary art. Born in Newcastle in 1906, the son of Russian émigré Moses Jacobson, he attended the city’s Royal Grammar School and later read Law at Oxford. After a brief spell practising law in London he joined his father’s tailoring firm at 23 and went on to become chairman, managing director and eventually president of Jackson the Tailor and Montague Burton – in its day the largest multiple tailoring firm in Europe. His interest in contemporary art largely followed the merger of his family firm with Burton in 1953 and quickly gathered pace with the establishment of Newcastle’s Stone Gallery in 1958. The Gallery soon became the leading private gallery specialising in contemporary art and as a frequent visitor to its exhibitions “Lenny” found himself more and more attracted to the colourful works on show. None of this should have surprised his family and friends given his lifelong interest in the fabrics his firm transformed into the most fashionable clothing of its period. Indeed, he was regarded as one of the three best buyers of cloth in the country. “I have a very strong colour sense and enjoy looking at new designs,” he once told a reporter writing a profile of his career. The collection he formed as a result of his taste found its way into his home, and even his city office, and included everything from oils by David Bomberg, to a striking bronze by Henry Moore. A special favourite, however, was a 1967 oil by his friend Laurence Stephen Lowry – a regular exhibitor and visitor to the Stone Gallery with whom he is pictured above on the latter’s birthday visit to the premises in 1971. Many works by leading Jewish artists of the period apart from Bomberg also found a place on the walls of his home in Newcastle reflecting his pride in his ancestry and its wonderful creativity. Lionel Jacobson died in 1978 aged 72, and the superb collection of work in this sale has been consigned by his widow Ruth and her family with part of the proceeds going to charity – an act in character with its long history of such gestures, resulting among other things in the establishment of a chair in pharmacology at Newcastle University.
Also included in the Fine Art Sale wer over 300 lots of oil paintings, watercolours, prints, antique maps and sculpture, including works by:
Constantin Stoiloff; Ruth Arion; Zila Newman; Tom Gleghorn; Tom McGuinness; Ralph Brown; G. Delatousche; Hans Jaenisch; Norman Cornish; Markey Robinson; Alexander Millar; D. Pasmore; Theodore Zimmerman A. E. Mulready;
John E. Millais; T. M. Richardson; J. W. Carmichael; John Varley; Samuel Calvert; James Hardy; John R. Reid; Robert Jobling; F. W. Scarbrough; Arthur Briscoe;
C. Dommersen; H. G. Glindoni; Neils Lund; Charles Martin Hardie; E. M. Wimperis;
Paul-Cesar Hélleu, and others.
A collection of Laszlo Hoenig designer furniture formerly owned by Lionel Jacobson together with other 20th century and antique furniture also performed very well.
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