Clifford Cyril Webb (1895-1972): Gathering Sea Coal, Northumberland. Linocut in colours; 29x71cm; Estimate £150-£200.
Two small and charming collections of pictures by early 20th Century artists go on sale in 10th July 2018 Picture Auction (as part of the Summer 2018 Fine Sale).
Clifford Cyril Webb was born in London in 1895. He enlisted into The Wiltshire Regiment in 1914 serving at Mons, Gallipoli and Mesopotamia and gaining a commission and promotion to Captain to serve in The Indian Army (1917-19).
Post war, Webb studied at Westminster School of Art under Walter Bayes and Bernard Meninsky. In the mid 1920s, he began lecturing in drawing at Birmingham School of Art and later lectured and taught drawing and engraving at St Martin's School of Art and Westminster School of Art.
Clifford Cyril Webb (1895-1972): Hopfield. Linocut in colours; 32x58cm; Estimate £150-£200.
Webb first exhibited in 1925 with the |Artist Craftsmen's Group, held his own show in 1926 at the Ruskin Galleries in Birmingham and in 1927 organised the third exhibition by The Modern Group, borrowing work from Vanessa Bell,Duncan Grant and Paul Nash.
Clifford Cyril Webb (1895-1972): Sea-Lions. Linocut in colours; 32.5x41cm; Estimate £150-£200.
Webb specialised in engraving and etching contemporary landscape and animal subjects illustrating a number of books, notably for the Golden Cockerel Press and Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons and Swallowdale.
Gustav Hellmut Sail (1908-1971): Girona Cathedral. Oil on Canvas; 59x101cm; Estimate £100-£200.
Gustav Hellmut Schmitt was born in Bromborough on the Wirral in 1908 during a period when his German father was working as an architect on the construction of Port Sunlight. His mother died soon after his birth and he was brought up by an aunt in Melsungen, northern Hesse, in Germany. He studied at the Bauhaus, where he was taught by XPaul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.
Gustav Hellmut Sail (1908-1971): Life Class Nudes. Two Oils on Board; Each 40x23cm; Estimate £100-£200.
In 1934, he emigrated, as a refugee from Nazi Germany changing his name to Sail by deed poll and, after the war, became a teacher at Burton-on-Trent School of Art. He married Barbara Wright at Marylebone Town Hall in 1935 where Duncan Grant, from whom he had rented a Soho flat, was best man. A pupil of Richard Seewald (1889-1976), he first exhibited at the Redfern Gallery in 1935.
Sail retired to West Somerset, where he died in 1971.
Comprising 20 pictures, the two collections are split into a dozen lots with estimates from £100 and upwards.
- Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood
- Clifford Cyril Webb (1895-1955)
- Gustav Hellmut Sail (1908-1971)
