This week has been very busy at the Gallery preparing the catalogue for our forthcoming Fine Art sale on the 26th September.

So, this week I thought I would tell you about a few of my favourite pieces in the sale. I am always drawn to pictures by local artists and we were recently asked by a Derbyshire lady to sell a beautiful oil painting by the local artist Stanley Royle. The picture depicts St Mary’s Church Ecclesfield from the Ladycroft and shows a girl picking flowers in the foreground. It is dated 1916 and has had an interesting history as in 1958 it was donated by the artists elder brother Albert to Ecclesfield school. It hung in the Lady Mabel Hall for several decades before being consigned to a basement store eventually being sold to a local art dealer. I expect the picture will fetch around £5000-8000.

Stanley Royle was born in Stalybridge in 1888 but in 1893 his family moved to Ecclesfield in Sheffield where his father became the station master at the local railway station. Stanley encouraged by his older cousin the artist Herbert Royle attended Sheffield College of Art. He exhibited work early in his career at the Royal Academy in London and the Paris Salon and became a member of the Royal Society of British artists in 1920. In 1931 he moved to Canada to teach at the Nova Scotia School of Art, later becoming Professor of drawing and painting at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1942 but returned to Sheffield in 1945. He was a successful artist and is known primarily for his landscape paintings often depicting local scenes in the Sheffield and Derbyshire countryside.

Another of my favourite pieces in the sale is a lovely oak bowl made by the famous Craftsman Robert Thompson carved with his signature trademark of a Mouse. It’s a lovely early example brought by the vendors grandparents in the 1930’s. I hope it will realise around £250-350 in the sale.

Also in the sale we have a wonderful collection of cameras inherited by the vendor from her late father who was a press photographer. There is great selection of cameras and lenses but my favourite are the Leica examples which are very sought after at auction. These can fetch four figures for the rarer models. The Leica company was founded in Wetzlar, Germany in 1869 by Ernst Leitz and they started  producing microscopes and binoculars. The name Leica was based on the first three letters of the founders surname and the first two letters of camera. In 1913 the first 35 mm film Leica prototypes were built by Oskar Barnack and was intended to be a compact camera for landscape photography. Several improvements and modifications were made and eventually in 1925 this camera was taken to market and was an instant success and was more portable than other cameras available at that time.

I am always drawn to works by the local artist George Cunningham and we have a lovely example in the sale. It depicts a scene in Holmfirth from the television series “Last of the Summer Wine” showing the characters Compo, Clegg and Foggy. I estimate it will fetch around £400-600.

So if you have anything you would like to learn more about as always myself and the other valuers here at Sheffield Auction Gallery are happy to assist you.