Original railway art sold at railwayana auctions in 2019

Only original paintings depicting railways in Britain and sold at the main railwayana auction houses during 2019 are included below - GCRA, GNRA, GWRA [including their “buy and go” sales], Stafford and Talisman. The online auction at railwayana.net did not hold a sale in 2019. Postal auctions [as at GCRA] are not included below, neither are results from general auction houses that hold occasional railwayana auctions [as at Thirsk], nor any that have railwayana sections within mixed sales. Paintings that were in the auction catalogues but which did not sell on the day are not included. Other railway paintings will certainly have changed hands in fine art sales elsewhere during the same period. All the information from which this summary has been taken has been available in the auction houses’ own online archives. Railway paintings continue to make a noticeable contribution to the variety of objects for sale at railwayana auctions, and, unsurprisingly, examples of original artwork provide popular catalogue cover illustrations for many of those auctions. The work of a relatively small group of leading railway artists repeatedly attracts considerably more interest than the majority of the art works brought to auction. The prolific output over recent years from Guild of Railway Artists associate member, Joe Townend, continued in 2019, when 27 of his unframed paintings were sold at these auctions, contributing 31% of all the paintings sold.



1. The number of original railway paintings sold at the main live auctions continues to fluctuate: 2011 - 32, 2012 - 41, 2013 - 61, 2014 - 88, 2015 - 105, 2016 - 136, 2017 - 81,

2018 - 66, 2019 - 87.



2. The number of railway artists whose work was sold at these auctions in 2019 was the same as in the previous year: 2011 - 25, 2012 - 20, 2013 - 27, 2014 - 34, 2015 - 42, 2016 - 48,  2017 - 31, 2018 - 25, 2019 - 25.



3. In 2019, the number of railwayana auction events that sold railway paintings was more than in the previous year: 2011 - 7, 2012 - 10, 2013 - 13, 2014 - 19, 2015 - 18, 2016 - 22, 2017 - 18, 2018 - 14, 2019 - 16. 



4. In 2019, nine paintings by five different artists reached or surpassed a £1,000 hammer price at railwayana auctions. Since 2011, the number of such paintings sold at these venues each year and 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, Broom,

                                  Greene,

2017 - 7 paintings - by Freeman [2], Price [2], Broom, Root, Breckon,

2018 - 9 paintings - by Hawkins [4], Breckon [2], Price [2], Root,

2019 - 9 paintings - by Breckon [4], Broom, Cuneo, PO Jones, Root,