Our Art Specialist Daniela is longing for the sun and mellow hills of her native Italy...

In this photo, she is holding a depiction in watercolours of the San Frediano quarter in Florence, with a view of the Basilica of Santo Spirito seen from the north banks of the river Arno, and looking towards the Torre di Bellosguardo, a 13th Century residence then owned by the poet Guido Cavalcanti, a friend and mentor of Dante Alighieri.

The artist is Sir William Coldstream, a prominent English realist painter who started his exhibiting career amongst the ranks of the “London Group”, after graduating from the Slade School of Art in 1929. He later co-established the Euston Road School with Graham Bell, Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers, as a reaction to the prevailing avant-garde of the time, and became principally a portrait painter.

Upon the outbreak of WWII the school dissolved, and Coldstream enrolled as a camouflage officer and then as an Official War Artist, working as a portraitist in the Middle East.

The painting on offer in our next Fine Sale on 7th March is datable to 1944, when the artist travelled through Italy and visited Capua, Florence, and Rimini, producing landscape paintings such as this example, very much in keeping with the Grand Tour tradition.

7/3/2021 ─ Lot 365 ─ Sir William Coldstream (British 1908-1987) ‘The Basilica of Santo Spirito in Florence, seen from the North Bank of the River Arno, towards Torre di Bellosguardo’, watercolour, 25cm x 35cm, framed and glazed.

Estimate £400 - £700

- Daniela Guardiani

Fine Interiors 7th March 2021