Original Railway Artwork sold at Railwayana Auctions in 2016

Included are:

- railway subjects only, so no shipping, trams etc,

- no original art work intended for secondary purposes like advertising material,

- paintings from the main live and internet railwayana specific auctions only.

Consequently, results from Bristol, Crewe, GCRA, GNRA, GWRA, railwayana.net, Solent, Stafford and Talisman are included. The information below is taken from all such auctions where paintings were sold that were held between 2011 and 2016. All the information has been available for perusal in the auction houses’ own on-line archives.

Unsold lots, as shown on the auction houses’ own websites where results have been posted after the events, are not included in the figures. Where two paintings have been sold as one lot, they have contributed two paintings to totals. Further railway paintings not included below, may well, of course, have changed hands elsewhere, including the Sheffield postal auctions, auction houses which do not specialise in railwayana like Thirsk, large volume sales like Bloxham, fine art auctions like Dreweatts and in general auction sales nationally.

The trends are as follows. Any mistakes over exact numbers are all my own.

1. The number of original railway paintings sold at the main live and internet railwayana auctions continues to increase:

2011 - 32, 2012 - 41, 2013 - 61, 2014 - 88, 2015 - 105, 2016 - 136.

2. From 2011 to 2016, the works of an increasing number of railway artists have featured in these sales:

2011 - 25, 2012 - 20, 2013 - 27, 2014 - 34, 2015 - 42, 2016 - 48.

3. The number of individual specialist railwayana auction events selling paintings has continued to increase overall:

2011 - 7, 2012 - 10, 2013 - 13, 2014 - 19, 2015 - 18, 2016 - 22. 

4. From 2011 to 2016, the number of artists whose work topped the £1,000 hammer price at specialist railwayana auctions has increased overall. The artists concerned were:

2011 - 3 paintings - by Heiron [2], Broom,

2012 - 3 paintings - by Bottomley, Hawkins, Broom,

2013 - 8 paintings - by Broom [2], Breckon [2], Heiron, Root, Price, Freeman,

2014 - 7 paintings - by Root [3], Elford, Breckon, Freeman, Hawkins,

2015 - 11 paintings - by Breckon [3], Hawkins [2], Root [2], Beech, Ellis, Elford, Price.

2016 - 13 paintings - by Breckon [4], Price [3], Hawkins [2], Freeman, Root, Broome,

                                  Greene,

The year ended with £4,250 being paid for a Barry J. Freeman painting at GCRA, following £3,600 for a Don Breckon at GWRA two weeks earlier. It was also noted that the splendid view of Crewe North sheds by James Green had a sale price of £6,750 at the 2016 Railart exhibition at Kidderminster and it displayed a “sold” sticker during the event. Top quality railway paintings by the acknowledged masters of the genre are clearly being recognised as such and as a result are attracting higher prices at auction.

[This article first appeared in the Railwayana Antiques Gazette, December 2016, and it is published here with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey. Photograph of the original painting of No. 46207 Princess Arthur of Connaught with thanks to the artist, Barry Price]