Post-Sale Report: Northern Art, September 2026

It’s been a week since our latest Northern Art Sale took place, giving our many successful buyers time to collect their new works, and us time to reflect on what the results show about the wider Northern and general Art Market.

 

High Demand beats Estimates

A number of paintings sold well above their estimates last week, showing that demand for Northern Art imagery and themes is as strong as ever at auction. Several bouts of competitive bidding between commission, telephone, and online bidders saw works race away to impressive hammer prices; take “Pennine Mills” by Geoffrey Key for example, which sold for an incredible £10,400. Rich with Northern imagery, this painting's sale marked our highest of the day and entered towards the top of the artist’s auction records. It is also not unlike another high-achieving painting by Key which sold for £9,000 here last year: “Mill Town with Red Sky”. While Geoffrey Key always does well at auction, as shown by the other strong results we achieved for a range of his paintings last week, it is clearly his more overtly 'Northern' scenes which continue to appeal to collectors and lead his oeuvre in the wider art market.

 

Geoffrey Key (British 1941-), "Pennine Mills", oil on canvas. Sold: £10,400 

 

Adolphe Pierre Valette also had a great day, as his painting “North Wales” opened our sale with a price of £4,700, while his more unusual work depicting headstones in “Northenden” went for £2,300 later on. Differing greatly in aesthetic and subject matter from Key’s work, it just goes to show the breadth of the Northern Art School, and its wide-scale appeal as a result. While industrial imagery drives Key's biggest sales, it was a rural view of the North that appealed to Valette's collectors this time. To further this point, Donald McIntyre’s painting, “Dark Sea No. 7”, also sold very well at £2,100.

 

            

Pierre Adolphe Valette (French 1876-1942), "North Wales", oil on board. Sold: £4,700

Pierre Adolphe Valette (French 1876-1942), "Northenden", oil on board. Sold: £2,300

Donald McIntyre (British 1923-2009), "Dark Sea No. 7", acrylic on board. Sold: £2,100

 

Artist Spotlight: Jack Simcock

This sale also featured a lovely selection of paintings by Staffordshire-born artist Jack Simcock. While he has featured in our Northern Art Sales before, his work does not come up at auction as often as some of the other big names in Northern Art, and so, not surprisingly, these works were met with a lot of admiration and enthusiastic bidding. His paintings are often described, positively, as ‘dark and gloomy’, almost monochrome, although the artist would insist that they were not, but are in fact built up of a range of subtle browns, reds, and greens. His highest sale of the day belonged to a small piece of this description: a depiction of a cottage and a wall, which sold for £1,200. In fact, all of his works sold above estimate, with another sombre yet striking (and my personal favourite) work titled “Wall, Tree, Snowscape” going for a hammer price of £850.

 

      

Jack Simcock (British 1929-2012), Cottage and wall, oil on board. Sold: £1,200

Jack Simcock (British 1929-2012), "Wall, Tree, Snowscape", oil on board. Sold: £850

 

Other Sale Highlights:

 

Trevor Grimshaw (British 1947-2001), "Wasteland", graphite on paper. Sold: £1,900

 

Brian Shields (Braaq) (British 1951-1997), "Blowing in the Wind", pastel on paper. Sold: £1,800

 

William Turner (British 1920-2013), "Underbank, Stockport", oil on board. Sold: £4,400

 

Theodore Major (British 1908-1999), "Walking by a Lake", oil on board. Sold: £9,500

 

Liam Spencer (British 1964-), "Manchester Murals", oil on board. Sold: £1,600

 

James Lawrence Isherwood (British 1917-1989), "Rugby Players, Wigan", oil on board. Sold: £1,100

 

 

Click here to view the full list of results from this sale

 

Running alongside this sale was another iteration of our exciting John Thompson Studio Collection Timed Auctions – exciting due to the fact that all works offered in this sale were done so with no reserve. These sales will continue to coincide with our quarterly Northern Art Auctions, so remember to check both catalogues when they’re online in December!