Led by the portrait of an Italian mastiff by il Guercino (1591-1666), dogs took a starring role in the Cheffins sale, The delightful oil of a stocky ‘Cane Corso’, perhaps the artist’s own dog, overshot a £80,000-120,000 estimate and was knocked down at £570,000 – the highest auction price in the English regions so far this year.
At another end of the price spectrum, a double foxhound portrait by Cuthbert Bradley (1861-1943) nearly tripled its top guide to sell for £2200. Signed and dated 1926, the 11 x 23in (29 x 60cm) oil on canvas was deemed a particularly fine example of the artist’s hound portraiture. It came from a country house in Hertfordshire.
Self-taught Bradley is ranked among the second tier of sporting painters with an auction record of $11,000 (around £7900) for a larger work of foxhounds outside a kennel, that sold in the Marshall B Coyne collection at Sotheby’s New York in June 2001.