Dickinson's Year in Sales 2025

Beginning the year on a high note, Dickinson sold George Stubbs’s A lion and a lioness in a cave (c. 1776), one of the artist’s favourite, sublime subjects, to a private collector. The following month, we sold Johan Zoffany’s Group portrait of Mr and Mrs John Burke of Carshalton and family, with a gentleman said to be the artist, in a wooded landscape (c. 1780), a complex, multi-figure group that descended in the family of the sitters until the end of the 20th Century, to another knowledgeable private collector who snapped it up quickly.

In March, the team headed off to Maastricht, where we enjoyed a successful fair, a highlight of which was the sale of Leiden fijnschilder artist Ary de Vois’ small-scale copper Portrait of the Artist as ‘The Lover’ (c. 1660s) to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Other sales from the fair included a Hieronymous Bosch-like The Temptation of Saint Anthony (c. 1600), filled with capering devils; a unique Ships on a stormy sea, painted over a fragmentary portrait of a young man, c. 1655-60 (portrait) and c. 1685-90 (seascape), the individual parts attributed respectively to Isaak Luttichuys and Ludolf Backhuysen; and an extremely fine Christ as the Man of Sorrows (c. 1525-30) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, originally commissioned by the Court Chaplain to King Ludwig II of Hungary and sold to a new private collector. As ever, it seems that unusual, eye-catching and even eccentric works tend to catch the eyes of fair visitors, and we were delighted to meet a number of new collectors once again this year.

Sales continued through the spring outside the fair. A bravura Sargent portrait of Frau Marie von Grunelius, later Marie Beaumont (1861 – 1948) (c. 1902-03), Andrea Riccio’s bronze Warrior (c. 1513-20) and a landscape by Johan Jongkind all sold to private collectors, while Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Mrs. Moses Franks, half length, in a white dress with blue sash (1766), a rare depiction of a Jewish sitter, went to the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. The Reynolds was consigned as part of a substantial midwestern collection of British 18th century portraits that Simon first visited over 30 years ago, subsequently keeping in touch with the owner, a passionate buyer with a very good eye; his children, who inherited the collection, then returned to Dickinson to handle its eventual sale.

Summer 2025 brought hot weather and a hot market, with the sales continuing at Dickinson during what is usually a slower period – and despite the fact that we were operating in the cramped quarters of the fourth-floor apartments at 58 Jermyn Street while builders spruced up the second-floor space, under the supervision of Simon’s daughter Octavia Dickinson. Among the very varied pieces sold in the summer months were an early Bruges School Virgin and Child (c. 1490 – 1500), Monet’s Falaises, temps gris (1882), a work Dickinson had sold to the vendor in 2017, Francesco Fanelli’s bronze Sleeping Cupid, which was probably cast for King Charles I (c. 1635-40), and a spectacular pair of landscapes, the result of a rare collaboration between Giovanni Paolo Panini and Paolo Anesi (after 1747). All were acquired from Dickinson by private collectors.

Although Dickinson did not participate in any autumn fairs this year, we enjoyed catching up with collectors – private and institutional alike – in our newly refurbished gallery rooms. Leading the autumn sales was Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s superb group portrait Endymion Porter (1587 – 1649) with his wife (d. 1663) and three sons: George (1620 – 1683), Charles (1623 – 1640) and Philip (1628 – 1655) (1632-33), which belonged to Sir Peter Lely as well. Other sales to private collectors included two miniatures, a portrait of Madeleine of Valois, Queen of Scotland (c. 1536-37) by Corneille de Lyon and a Miniature portrait of Queen Catherine of Aragon (1525-26) by Lucas Horenbout, as well as a Portrait of George IV (1762 – 1830), as Prince of Wales, bust-length (c. 1790s) by John Hoppner and Pio Fedi’s marble Il Genio della Pesca (The Genius of Fishing) (1864). We did not restrict our sales to the realm of the old masters, either: Dickinson also placed a Pissarro, Chaumières à Auvers-sur-Oise (c. 1873), with a private collector, and sold Yves Klein’s IKB 43 (1958) on behalf of a client.