Shropshire Star

Abstract painting sells for £84,000 at Shropshire auction

An abstract painting by minimalist artist Richard Lin has sold for £84,000 at a Shropshire auction.

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The minimalist painting by Richard Lin

The 1958 painting went under the hammer well in excess of its guide price, at the Portcullis Auction Room in Ludlow.

The oil on canvas painting - ma,ed. Painting 5 · XI ·58 London - which sold for £84,000 on Thursday, was purchased by a private collector from Germany, after strong competition on the telephones.

“We’ve been selling a number of items from the estate of the late Islwyn Watkins over the past few weeks and expected this lot to sell for around £50,000. However, we weren’t expecting such a high price,” said Phillip Blackman Howard, auctioneer at McCartneys.

“There’s been huge interest in both Islwyn Watkins’ and Richard Lin’s work. The resulting sale price illustrates that a provincial auction house is capable of realising significant sales figures without the need of ‘London Salerooms’,” he says.

Islwyn Watkins, 1938-2018, was a potter and artist who also ran a successful antique business on the Welsh borders. He met Richard Lin, originally from Taichung, Taiwan, when they both taught at Ravenscroft College of Art and Design in the early 1960s.

“Richard Lin is regarded as one of the leading artists of the 20th Century and his reputation in Taiwan and East Asia has never been higher, which it’s why it’s been a great privilege to sell his work here in Ludlow,” Mr Blackman Howard said.

Richard Lin was born in Taichung, Taiwan in 1933. He re-located to England in 1949 and studied Art and Architecture at London Polytechnic between 1954 and 1958. He taught at the Ravenscroft College of Art and Design where he met Islwyn Watkins who was also a teacher at the college.

He lived and worked in Wales for a period during the 1970s.