The next Van Sabben auction is tomorrow, but we are only going to pay it a very brief visit. This is partly because it is, as ever, vast and with few British posters tucked away in there. But also because they’ve changed the format of their website, and the pictures are tiny. How can I persuade you to care about a poster when the image is this small?
Anonymous, est. €90-150
Actually it looks better there than it does on their website, but even so, I’m not sure I’d want to buy a poster on the basis of that few pixels. I can also tell you that it dates from 1948, but they are abroad so it’s not fair to expect them to know that.
There are a few other posters of interest out there too, like this Lewitt Him.
Lewitt-Him, est. €120-200
There are also a tiny set of British railway posters, like this example of Frank Newbould doing Tom Purvis impersonations for the LNER.
Frank Newbould, 1932, est. €1200-2500
Although that is preferable to Frank Newbould doing Frank Newbould, at least in the case of this poster.
Frank Newbould, 1945, est. €280-450
And both of those images really are too small to be any use at all.
But my favourite has to be this one; yet another classic from the Orient Line department of tasteful modernism.
De Holden Stone, est € 220-450
This is still the only poster I have ever seen by James de Holden Stone, and all I know about him is contained in a short paragraph here, so any further info would be much appreciated.
I don’t understand the rationale of these sales. They regularly have over 1000 lots, many to my mind over-estimated, and sure enough the regularly only sell about a third of them, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference to the estimates for the next sale.
I agree, although they do sell some via aftersales as well (we’ve bought this way once or twice). But it’s still an odd way of doing things.