Dreweatts 1759 | Dame Stephanie Shirley CH: A Legacy shaped by Technology, Philanthropy and Art

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Dame Stephanie Shirley CH: A Legacy shaped by Technology, Philanthropy and Art

Dreweatts

Donnington Priory

Newbury, Berkshire

RG14 2JE

United Kingdom

This is a live online auction. There is no pre-auction competitive bidding. Click “Important information” for more details on registration & bidding.

The total hammer price for all lots sold from The Estate of the late Dame Stephanie Shirley CH will be donated to Autistica, in accordance with Dame Stephanie’s wishes. This does not apply to lots consigned by other beneficiaries, as indicated in the sale catalogue and online.

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Viewing at Dreweatts London (highlights)
23 Feb 2026 10:00-16:00
24 Feb 2026 10:00-16:00
25 Feb 2026 10:00-19:00

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Mar 10, 2026 10:30 AM GMT

Mar 07, 2026 10:00 AM - 03:00 PM GMT

Mar 08, 2026 10:00 AM - 03:00 PM GMT

Mar 09, 2026 10:00 AM - 03:00 PM GMT

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Buyer's premium	27 % (exc. Sales tax)
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λ JEREMY ANNEAR (BRITISH, B.1949), METRO BEAT II (PARIS)

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1,800 GBP

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2,000 - 4,000 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ IVON HITCHENS (BRITISH, 1893-1979), DARK AND LIGHT POPPIES

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60,000 GBP

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70,000 - 100,000 GBP

λ IVON HITCHENS (BRITISH 1893-1979) DARK AND LIGHT POPPIES Oil on canvas Signed (lower right); further signed, titled, dated 1960 and inscribed Greenleaves/Petworth Sussex (to artist's label verso) 51.5 x 105.5cm (20¼ x 41½ in.) Painted in 1960. Provenance: Theo Waddington Fine Art Ltd., London, stock no. 20 Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames Acquired from the above in 1997 Exhibited: London, Arts Council, Ivon Hitchens, A Retrospective Exhibition , at Tate Gallery, London and travelling to Bradford City Art Gallery and Birmingham City Museum & Art Gallery, 1963, no. 137 Henley-on-Thames, Bohun Gallery, Ivon Hitchens, Paintings , 13 September to 9 October 1980 Ivon Hitchens distinctive elongated canvasses have proved enduringly popular with critics and collectors of twentieth century British art. His vibrantly coloured compositions have their roots in European modernism with clear influences from the likes of Cezanne and Matisse but they are also quintessentially British, drawing inspiration from the Sussex landscape in which he lived. Poppies are a recurring component of numerous Hitchens' paintings particularly in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, either with other flowers or part of a broader still life. The dazzling, jewel-like splashes of red perfectly fit Hitchens' playful exploration of the interaction between light and dark and demonstrate his expert mastery of colour. As in the current work, the flowers are frequently set against greens, blues, and ochres, creating strong contrasts that energize the surface. These reds are not merely descriptive; they function emotionally, suggesting vitality, warmth, and transience. The poppies appear to vibrate or float, their forms softened and elongated, as if seen through memory or motion rather than direct observation. This approach aligns Hitchens with modernist concerns, particularly the move away from realism toward a more subjective vision of nature. Of all his still life subjects, his poppy paintings are the perfect vehicle for exploring abstraction, movement, and the emotional resonance of landscape. Hitchens began his career in London, graduating from the RA Schools in 1919. He moved to Hampstead and was one of the earliest members of the Seven and Five Group which, belying its conservative roots, went on to become a force for modernism in the 1920s. Members included Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Christopher Wood. Hitchens early work was predominately representational, but as the 1930s progressed, he became increasingly drawn to abstraction. He became interested in Kandinsky's theories on the relationship between music and painting and from 1937 adopted his signature elongated canvasses. "My pictures are painted to be 'listened' to... I should like things to fall into place with so clear a notion that the spectator's eye and 'aesthetic ear' shall receive a clear message, a clear tune. I seek to recreate the truth of nature by making my own song about it (in paint)... this creation must satisfy me as being true to life, though not naturalistically accurate." Ivon Hitchens, Notes on Painting , 1940s (reproduced in Ark, Royal College of Art, 1956) quoted in full in Peter Khoroche, Ivon Hitchens , Andre Deutsch, London, 1990, pp.54-56). Condition Report: The work is framed and was not examined out of the frame. There is some slight cracking to the purple paint and one small loss to the lower centre right. Otherwise the work appears to be in condition with no evidence of any restoration under UV light. Condition Report Disclaimer

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ JOHN HOYLAND (BRITISH, 1934-2011), FIRE ISLAND

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3,500 GBP

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4,000 - 6,000 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ MAGGI HAMBLING (BRITISH, B.1945), SUNRISE

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2,600 GBP

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3,000 - 5,000 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ ALAN DAVIE (BRITISH, 1920-2014), RAPTURE CAPTURE

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600 GBP

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1,000 - 2,000 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ SALLY HEYWOOD (BRITISH, B.1964), UNTITLED

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180 GBP

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300 - 500 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ SHONA BARR (BRITISH, B.1965), LOCHSIDE

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480 GBP

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800 - 1,200 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ CATHERINE ARMITAGE (BRITISH, 1944-2020), KERRIS, SUMMER, 2007

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180 GBP

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300 - 500 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ WILLIAM SCOTT (BRITISH, 1913-1989), QUIET RIVER

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13,000 GBP

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15,000 - 25,000 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ PAUL FEILER (BRITISH, 1918-2013), ZENNOR

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13,000 GBP

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15,000 - 25,000 GBP

λ PAUL FEILER (BRITISH 1918-2013) ZENNOR Oil on canvas Signed and dated 62 (lower right); further signed, titled, inscribed and dated 1962 (to backboard) 51 x 46cm (20 x 18in.) Provenance: Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames Acquired from the above in 1997 As a teenage in 1933, Feiler fled his home in Frankfurt to escape Nazi rule, firstly to the Netherlands and then on to England. In the late 1930s, he attended the Slade School of Fine Art and met fellow artists Patrick Heron and Adrian Heath. By the late 1940s, Feiler had gained artistic recognition and exhibited with the Royal Academy, Leicester Galleries, and Redfern Gallery. In 1949, he travelled down to Cornwall to visit friends and was introduced to artists William Scott and Peter Lanyon. Four years later, Feiler relocated to Kerris near Penzance, and took up a teaching position at the St Ives School under Terry Frost. He subsequently went on to become part of the second generation of St Ives artists, depicting the Cornish landscape through their particular vision of Abstraction. The present work--so named after the village of Zennor on the north coast of Cornwall--sits at the vanguard of Feiler's artistic practice. Around this time, Feiler was occupied with Cézanne's assertion that 'a picture should give us ... an abyss in which the eye is lost.' In a similar vein, Feiler observed that although we experience the world standing vertically, we perceive it in largely horizontal terms. This interest in perspective and our place within it, was powerfully expressed throughout Feiler's oeuvre, and informed his signature use of circular, square, and linear forms. He aimed to convey what he termed 'elusive space', which can be understood as formless volumes of air and light, inspired, in part, by the optical effects he experienced while hillwalking the Alps as a boy. In Zennor , Feiler employs a restrained palette of whites, greys, blues, ochres, and umbers, and reworks the composition with such rapid and vigorous mark-making. The circular form at the centre of the composition is intersected by a vertical line incised directly into the paint's surface. Elsewhere, he scrapes back areas of thick white paint, to reveal underlayers of blue and grey that create a chalky surface, evocative of the rocks, cliffs, and sea spray of the Cornish coastline. In a closely related treatment of subject and technique, Feiler painted Porthledden, Deep Blue, 1962. The critic John Steer wrote: 'The art of Paul Feiler is a protracted love-affair between himself and the landscape of Cornwall... it is his experience of Cornish space and light that is the real subject-matter of his paintings.' Zennor, however, sits at a juncture in Feiler's practice. By the late 1960s, he moved away from the painterly Abstraction of his British contemporaries, and towards the conceptual Abstract Expressionism practiced by the American artists. Notably Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock--the former of which Feiler welcomed to his Cornish studio one afternoon in 1958 with Frost and Lanyon. Feiler was also influenced by the idea of 'Suprematism'--developed by Avant-guard artist-philosopher Kazimir Malevich--which is defined as the: 'supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts.' Combined with his interest for the lunar landings of the late 1960s, Feiler channelled these radical aesthetics and developed his Shrine series, characterised by circles set within concentric squares. And whilst his Shrine paintings came to dominate the next forty years of his career, their aesthetic foundation can be trace to the Abstractions seen in Zennor . John Steer, Review of Paul Feiler's exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, November 1962 Kazimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism (translation by Howard Dearstyne), 1926 Paul Feiler (1918-2013), The Redfern Gallery, accessed 2026 The Life & Works of Paul Feiler (1918-2013), Paul Feiler, accessed 2026 Condition Report: The work is framed and was not examined out of its frame. There is some cracking to the surface of the paint, particularly to the centre left hand quadrant. There are a few losses through the upper section of the painting. There is a further small area of restoration about 2cm in length in the upper right quadrant, which is most visible under UV light. Condition Report Disclaimer

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ BRAM BOGART (DUTCH, 1921-2012), UNTITLED

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4,500 GBP

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5,000 - 8,000 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ BRYAN INGHAM (BRITISH, 1936-1997), PORTRAIT OF A.Ö.I.

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600 GBP

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1,000 - 1,500 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ BRYAN INGHAM (BRITISH, 1936-1997), STILL LIFE WITH BOTTLES AND KNIFE

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1,000 GBP

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1,200 - 1,800 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ ROBIN RICHMOND (BRITISH, B.1951), HISTORY OF A STORM IN SIX PARTS

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180 GBP

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300 - 500 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ MAURICE COCKRILL (BRITISH, 1936-2013), MOONRISE - SMALL VERSION NO 3& NO 4 4

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480 GBP

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800 - 1,200 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ KÁROLY KESERÜ (HUNGARIAN B. 1962), UNTITLED (NO. 199)

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240 GBP

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400 - 600 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ BARBARA RAE (SCOTTISH, B.1943), ABIQUE

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2,600 GBP

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3,000 - 5,000 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ MARJ BOND (BRITISH, B.1939), THE HUNTSMAN

103

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180 GBP

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300 - 500 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ JOHN HOUSTON (BRITISH, 1930-2008), YACHTS OFF THE COAST

106

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240 GBP

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400 - 600 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ COLIN BISHOP (BRITISH, 20TH/21ST CENTURY), LANDSCAPE

107

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150 GBP

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250 - 350 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ SANDRA BLOW (BRITISH, 1925-2006), PORTHMEOR SERIES, CORNWALL

111

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5,000 GBP

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6,000 - 10,000 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ EWA WAWRZYNIAK (POLISH, B.1957), TOWARDS SILENCE

130

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180 GBP

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300 - 500 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire

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λ ROGER CECIL (BRITISH, 1942-2015), WHITE NIGHT WITH ANGHARAD

133

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1,300 GBP

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1,500 - 2,500 GBP

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Auction date(s): Mar 10

Lot location: Newbury, Berkshire