Sale of the picture collection of Sir David and Lady Scott of Northamptonshire on
19 November 2008
On Wednesday 19 November 2008, Sotheby’s sold over 240 oil paintings, watercolours
and prints to a packed auction room at their premises in New Bond Street, London.
The sale was for the benefit of the Finnis Scott Foundation. Sir David Scott was
a career diplomat who retired from the Foreign Office in 1947. He spent his retirement
at the Dower House at Boughton House, Northamptonshire, belonging to his relation
the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry. At Boughton he pursued his dual passions for
gardening and collecting British paintings. He died in 1986, leaving his collection
to his second wife, Valerie Finnis. On her death in 2006, it was her wish that the
collection should be sold and the proceeds devoted to charitable purposes.
Sir David and Lady Scott’s collection was considered one of the finest of Victorian
narrative paintings left in private hands. The sale was much anticipated and proved
a great testament to them as collectors. It raised nearly £4 million and set new
record prices for a number of artists. The most notable was the hammer price of £890,000
paid for No Walk Today, a well-known image of Victorian childhood by Sophie Anderson.
Scott bought this painting, depicting a pretty young girl staring miserably out of
a window at the rain, in around 1926 for 14 guineas. Equally outstanding was the
price paid for Christ in the House of His Parents, started by Rebecca Solomons and
completed by Sir John Everett Millais. This was the second version of the famous
painting now hanging in Tate Modern. It realised £510,000. Sir David had paid 1,200
guineas for this oil on canvas in 1969. William Dyce’s Welsh Landscape with Two Women
Knitting, which originally cost £950 in 1965, realised £450,000. However, it was
not just Victorian paintings that created a stir. Scott was also a keen follower
and collector of contemporary artists, resulting in a quality selection of 20th century
British landscapes, London townscapes and portraits. Foremost amongst these was La
Mitrailleuse by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson. This small pen and ink drawing
depicting the claustrophobic tension of trench warfare on the Western Front during
the First World War sold for £85,000. Scott had previously purchased the drawing
from Sotheby’s in 1951 for £25. Towards the end of the sale came a group of works
by the Northamptonshire artists Ralph Hartley and Nina Carroll, which all sold at
very healthy prices.
