Posted Date: 29 July 2010
RARE JENNY SAVILLE PAINTING GOES UNDER THE HAMMER
* “The one that Charles Saatchi didn’t get” valued at £50k
A self portrait by acclaimed British artist Jenny Saville has been placed for sale at the McTear’s Fine and Scottish Pictures auction.
The oil painting is one of well over four hundred lots in the Glasgow sale on 11th August and has been valued at approximately £50,000.
Referred to by some as “the one that Charles Saatchi didn’t get”, the painting was purchased by a Scottish collector at Saville’s debut sell-out exhibition: her degree show at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) in 1992.
Charles Saatchi discovered Saville’s work at her post graduate exhibition following her year at London’s Slade School of Art. He famously bought the entire exhibition and then set out to track down and buy every painting Saville had sold in Glasgow the previous year. He also commissioned her to produce paintings exclusively for him for a period of approaching two years.
Magda Ketterer from McTear’s Auctioneers said: “Jenny Saville’s contribution to British contemporary art cannot be overstated. Like her contemporary, Damien Hirst, she is a key member of the hugely influential YBA (Young British Artists) movement and her work has attracted world wide acclaim from critics and collectors alike.
“It is rare to see one of Saville’s works at auction in Scotland and we believe the only other Saville original was a pencil sketch which sold in Edinburgh in 2006 for £30,000. This self portrait is a small but nonetheless very important piece and it is absolutely typical ‘Jenny Saville’.
“We are very confident it will attract interest from collectors both at home and overseas. The internet has transformed the auction world in recent years and we now routinely promote prime works like this to a genuinely global audience.”
Saville’s painting style has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens and her paintings are usually much larger than life size. She is unusual among the Young British Artists in her dedication to the traditional art of oil painting.
Saville has retained a strong interest in the female body throughout her career and her paintings of obese women are sought out by collectors from across the globe, selling at auction, in some instances, for amounts in excess of $1 million.
In addition to the Jenny Saville work, the McTear’s Fine and Scottish Picture Sale will see a significant number of other high profile pieces go under the hammer including works by The Glasgow Boys, The Glasgow Girls, Stephen Conroy, Alison Watt, Peter Howson, Adrian Wiszniewski, and John Bellany.
This press release was issued on behalf of McTear's by
wavepr.co.uk.