Sir Stanley Spencer painting sells for £5.4m

The auction record for a painting by Sir Stanley Spencer was broken double within minutes at Sotheby’s in London.

Workmen in the House, which had an better estimate of £2m, sold for £4.7m before Sunflower and Dog Worship, with a top estimate of £1.5m, fetched £5.4m.

The prior record was the £1.43m achieved at Sotheby’s in December for 1954 work Hilda and I at Pond Street.

Lucian Freud’s Boat on a Beach fetched £2.6m in Wednesday’s sale a record for a work on paper by the artist.

Sir Stanley, described by the auction house as one of the 20th Century’s most significant UK artists, was born in 1891 and lived and worked in the Berkshire village of Cookham, now home to a gallery of his work.

Sunflower and Dog Worship, 1937, for now, shows a husband and wife being embraced by giant flowers and explores Sir Stanley’s notion of universal harmony.

The collection was inherited and maintained by his ward, Honor Frost, an underwater archaeology pioneer who died final year aged 92.

The second and third parts of the auction take place on Thursday.
Artists up for auction contain sculptor Henry Moore and LS Lowry.