A large swathe of artwork which was once part of Fife’s former hire collection is be sold.
Around 300 items will be auctioned off in a standalone sale in Edinburgh at 11am on Saturday April 2 after Fife Council decided to sell the pieces to recoup some cash.
Notable works by well-known Scottish painters will be among the artworks listed in the Edinburgh Auction Centre sale, and the local authority believes around £80,000 could be secured by disposing of the items deemed surplus to requirements.
The move comes after the council reviewed its four art collections and decided it could potentially do without the 787 items in the art hire collection specifically a collection deliberately built to be hired out to organisations and members of the public.
Councillors subsequently agreed to transfer 126 pieces into the Fife Museums Collection, which is managed by Fife Cultural Trust on behalf of the council, and offer the other 661 pieces to Fife’s other museums free of charge.
That process has now been completed, with the remaining ‘unwanted’ work now due to go under the hammer to find a new home.
“We want to draw people’s attention to the auction as there are a number of works which depict picturesque local landscapes,” said Linda Temple, Fife Council’s cultural partnerships and events strategy manager.
“We also believe that the sale will have great national appeal due to the diversity of the works, with pieces by many prominent Scottish painters from the 20th Century, including Brian Keany, Elspeth Lamb, John Kirkwood, Ken Morton, Mary Toms and Alastair Mack to name but a few.”
Works by Sir J. W. Gillies, Sir William McTaggart and Sir Robin Philips, among others, were among the items retained by the council and will now have pride of place in the Fife Museums Collection, while a further 27 pieces deemed of significant interest to Fife’s art heritage have been donated to various local museums.
Those pieces include works by William P. Vannet, and Generation artists Owen Logan and Martin Boyce.
The 661 paintings were valued for insurance purposes in 2010 at £364,560, but the collection is only anticipated to fetch £80,000 at most after auction fees are deducted and various other factors are taken into account.
Most of the items had lain in storage at Auchterderran Centre in Cardenden since 2007, and many of the frames and paintings themselves were said to have suffered “significant damage”.
Ms Temple added that any money raised from the sale of the collection will be used for essential restoration and conservation of the remaining artworks being transferred to the Fife Museums Collection.
The auction is being managed by Thomson Roddick Scottish Auctions and will take place at their auction house in Rosewell near Edinburgh.