Lynn Chadwick, Beast XXI, bronze, conceived in 1959, cast by Brotal in 1960, number 1 from an edition of 6 (est. £100,000-150,000) Australian architect Kenneth Scott acquired Beast XXI directly from Lynn Chadwick in 1960. A founding member of the Ghana Institute of Architects, Scott was celebrated for a plethora of architectural monuments across the country, and kept this sculpture in the experimental modernist home he had designed for himself in Accra. Chadwick first struck upon the beast as a subject after a visit to Mykonos and Delos, where he saw the ancient remains of the famous avenue of lions at Delos – admiring the menacing posture and weathered forms of the sixth century B.C. sculptures. A lithe creature with an alert, anxious and threatening presence, this work does not represent a particular kind of beast; instead pulsating with a mysterious animal vigour. 

STANLEY SPENCER – A HEAVENLY VISION
Sir Stanley Spencer, Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Punts by the River, oil and pencil on canvas, 1958 (est. £3,000,000-5,000,000) Stanley Spencer is an artist for whom the intimate and everyday was inseparable from the eternal and ineffable. His paintings transform ordinary people and familiar places, with his native village of Cookham portrayed as a Holy Land of miracles and divine intervention. Punts by the River belongs to his series ‘Christ Preaching from Cookham Regatta’, envisaged as one of six paintings to accompany his 17-foot-long centre piece of the subject that remained unfinished on his death and which now hangs at the Stanley Spencer gallery in Cookham. Having remained in the same private collection since it was acquired in 1959, the painting will go on view to the public for the first time since 1961. Early Regattas often highlighted the social distance between punters and those who were confined to the riverbank. Spencer, as the sixth son of a piano teacher from the Home Counties, had always seen the idea of renting a punt as ‘an unattainable Eden’ reserved only for the upper classes. In this self-portrait – painted in the same year that he received his knighthood – Spencer realises the tantalising desire of floating on the river. The lively local girls are depicted as a fleshy, tangled mass of limbs, as a young – and seemingly naked – young man tries to break their cosy circle. Bearing a strong resemblance to Spencer as a youth, the pose is contorted in the manner of a saint in a Renaissance altarpiece – a hint at the divine amidst the earthly pleasures of a village festival. WILLIAM ROBERTS – THE EVERYDAY PAINTER William Roberts, The Barber’s Shop, oil on canvas, circa 1946 (est.£150,000 – 250,000) From his earliest days at the Slade through the heady Bohemian scene of Post-WWI Soho, William Roberts had always remained fascinated by the hustle and bustle of everyday life. His love of the everyday – both in terms of subjects and settings – resulted in some of the most visually engaging poular scenes of the period, including this busy scene of men at the barber shop.

Lowry’s Industrial Panoramas are a distillation of all the key themes and ideas of his art, which in itself is a distillation of life in the industrial towns of the north of England in the CELEBRATING L.S. LOWRY ‘My ambition was to put the industrial scene on the map, because nobody had done it...’ One of the great painters of modern life, L.S. Lowry captures everyday life in the cities of the Industrial North of England and find beauty in the harsh reality. Together, the eight works by the artist in the auction cover every aspect of his oeuvre, spanning paintings and drawings, dating from 1920 to the 1960s. Laurence Stephen Lowry, Father Going Home, oil on canvas, 1962 (est. £250,000-350,000) Formerly in the collection of Monty Bloom, a Welsh businessman and important patron of the artist who championed the stark, individual portraits, this humorous and joyful painting of a father on his way home from work is being offered at auction for the first time. Though Lowry is the artist of hardship and strife, he also depicts the resilience of working-class culture and how their identity gave strength to the factory workers of the Northern industrial towns. Lowry infuses an apparent naturalism with subtle expressionist qualities, lending the figure a swagger that succinctly tells of his mood and the feeling of walking home after a long day and perhaps a few pints. In the window, a small boy waits, the smile on his face mirroring that of his father, creating an emotional charge. Unlike many of Lowry’s paintings, the scene is bathed in irrepressible warmth. Laurence Stephen Lowry, Industrial Panorama, oil on canvas, 1954 (est. £1,000,000- 1,500,000) early 20th century. The painting of the experience and psychology of the industrial city makes him not only an important artist historically, but also a hugely relevant artist internationally today, as he puts the spotlight on the other side of ‘progress’. This composite landscape is a master-class in Lowry’s poetic vision. Larger than the majority of his works, it has an expansive quality – the cold, dirty river weaving through the imaginary city heralding the viewer’s arrival into this hard world. artist’s