Our Favourite Things

OUR FAVOURITE THINGS

Richard Green Gallery has been dealing in paintings for sixty-seven years. This exhibition in our gallery at 147 New Bond Street and online showcases some of the artists who have formed a central part of our business down the decades: discovered, rediscovered and cherished by generations of collectors. Remarkably, over a third of the works in this exhibition have been sold and bought back by us, sometimes more than once.

As a teenager in the mid-1950s, I met Sir Alfred Munnings when my father James Green held an exhibition of his works at his Bond Street Gallery. Munnings’s Early morning, Newmarket, in our present show, was purchased by me in 1969 and has remained in the same aristocratic private collection for over half a century, until we recently reacquired it. Interest in Munnings’s sporting paintings has never waned: we have sold over 500 of his works.

Another perennial favourite is Atkinson Grimshaw, the Leeds-born conjurer of misty moonlight scenes. Beneficiary of the vogue for Victorian paintings which began in the 1960s, we have seen his market steadily rise. The huge enthusiasm for Impressionist paintings which characterized the twentieth century has seen a corresponding rise in interest for Post-Impressionists such as Henri Le Sidaner and Gustave Loiseau, painters we have championed since the 1970s.

Titans of the art world in their lifetimes, Henry Moore and Dame Barbara Hepworth put British sculpture on the international stage. They have never been more highly appreciated than in the current era, which now can put Modernism in context from the perspective of the twenty-first century. The unique vision of LS Lowry was also lauded in his lifetime, but the passage of the years has enhanced both his ‘National Treasure’ status and his international reach. We have been buying Lowry’s work for more than fifty years, with around 420 of his paintings passing through our hands.

Every time an artwork is delivered to a new owner, it sets off on a new chapter. Our experience of the art market and our sheer enjoyment of the works that we sell will ensure that these ‘Family Favourites’ will be appreciated for many years to come.

Richard Green